The Startup CPG Podcast

Alicia Nelson
Foreign the Sales ops is really like they're the cog. And without a really strong, healthy sales ops team, you're not going to be able to execute those orders and get them to your customers on time and in full. So that sales ops piece of what my team does is really vitally important to just making sure that those orders get to that customer on time and in full. And if you can do that, if you can get your orders to your customers on time and in full, you will be able to continue to grow those relationships with those customers and expand that business.

00:47
Daniel Scharff
Welcome to the podcast Here at Startup cpg we love to tackle technical topics we think you should know about. And today that topic is sales operations. It's a really critical function at growing businesses that make sure you receive and fulfill orders the right way when there are so many things that can and do go wrong. Today we're joined by Alicia Nelson from organic juice shop maker so Good so youo. She's gonna explain it all, what their team is responsible for, their key challenges, tools, and what makes a good Sales Ops person. The episode is made possible by our friends at SPS Commerce. You know them as leaders in edi. That's Electronic Data Interchange and that's the automated data platform that flows all the orders from retailers and distributors directly to you and your supply chain.

01:31
Daniel Scharff
We're joined by Emily Koran from their team who's gonna share insights from helping hundreds of brands work more efficiently. All right, here we go. Welcome everyone. I am really excited to talk through the so good so you story here and thanks a lot to our friends at SPS Commerce for joining us as well. So let's start with some intros. Alicia, do you mind going?

01:57
Emily Curran
Sure.

01:57
Alicia Nelson
My name is Alicia Nelson. I am sales and Customer Operations Manager with so Good so you. I've been with the company almost five years. Five years this July. And yeah, I've worn a lot of different hats in my time with Sew Good so youo. I came in as just a lead account manager and have kind of grown with the company in my role. I currently manage our account management team and they really are the ones that manage our day to day execution of our orders, making sure that we get those orders to our customers on time and in full. I also work closely with our operations and logistics teams to kind of help coordinate all of that executional support. I also created along with the cross functional Partners, our project management department.

02:41
Alicia Nelson
And so I manage that for all of our commercialization which includes discontinuations, reformulations and any New product launches or customer product launches that we do. So that's me.

02:53
Daniel Scharff
All right. So I love talking to ops people. I'm always so curious about what you guys do, how you spend your days. Can you take me through a sample kind of day for you? Like what do you get when, like, what do you start doing? What's the beginning of your day focused on? What's some of the actual tactical stuff you end up doing?

03:10
Alicia Nelson
Yes, yes. So our internal messaging system we use is Slack. And so that's the first thing that I look at every day. Usually by the time that I've looked at that, there's already a lot of communication back and forth. We set up a separate kind of inter cross functional department called SWAPs which stands for Sales, Logistics and Operations. And those are really those cross functional teams that work to get all of our orders out on time and in full. So it's really drilling into that first and foremost and supporting my team with any fires, any questions, situations, scenarios that we need to address. And then from there it's just going through email.

03:49
Alicia Nelson
But then really because the majority of the sales team that I'm a part of works remotely, it's calls, I'm on calls from pretty much all day long and that can range from internal calls to external calls. But really all of it is to continue to support the sales team, our operations teams and so good. So you.

04:09
Daniel Scharff
So that's the same for me. I'm up on Slack first thing in the morning checking out what's going on. What would some of those messages be coming in be about? Like hey, this truck didn't show up or this order got delivered wrong or can someone check on this that it's ready? What kind of stuff are you seeing?

04:25
Alicia Nelson
Yes, all of that and more we have each week. We're. We work with a 3 PL that helps to. They pack all of our product for us and then they pick all of our orders. So we really rely on those relationships throughout the week to communicate how are we looking for those orders? Are we going to be on time? Are we going to be in full? So there's a lot of questions related to that. What's the status of the orders? Are there any issues with materials coming in to support the build out of those products? So sometimes we have those types of issues where materials are coming in and they're having to take that material in, turn it around, pack out the product and then hopefully turn it around to pick it and then ship it out.

05:06
Alicia Nelson
So we have some of those scenarios a lot of times though, it is about just the overall workflow of our three pl and how they're able to manage all of the orders that we have coming in. We also have some last minute requests from customers that come in, hey, can I increase my order? Can I get my order early? Hey, can I reduce my order for whatever the reason is? And so we have some of those conversations we have to navigate. And then like I said, just ensuring that all of those orders are packed and picked and staged and ready for those trucks when they deliver. Sometimes that's not the case. And so then there's conversation around, you know, when can we have those orders ready to ship them out?

05:48
Alicia Nelson
And then my team really works with the customer then to communicate any issues that we're having, any delays, ensuring that appointments are confirmed so when that product gets picked up, the truck's on its way, making sure that they have an appointment. Every single one of our customers has an appointment system that they work with. And so the warehouses that these products are coming into are extremely busy. And so those appointments are really important to be able to hit and try to maintain. And so a lot of times my team will have to communicate back with those customers if we're having any issues with getting that product out of our 3PO or if we run into any issues on the road.

06:28
Alicia Nelson
We also have had a lot of conversation recently around just how busy the warehouses are once the trucks actually get there to actually be unloaded. And it's pretty crazy to think, but some of these trucks will sit there for six plus hours. Sometimes that's not what we like to do. And with different carriers that we partner with, sometimes that will equal detention fees, which means they're going to start charging us money after it's usually like two to three hours and how long they're sitting there to be able to get unloaded. The majority of the time though, those trucks will just move on to their next stop. We do a combination of full truckloads and less than full truckloads. So LTL and ftl. So the LTL trucks were not the only product on their truck.

07:12
Alicia Nelson
They've got other product on their trucks and other appointments they need to hit. So eventually there's that conversation about let's pull the driver, have him go to his next stop and could he potentially come back. So a lot of moving parts, a.

07:23
Daniel Scharff
Lot of conversation, and that's probably all before 9am I know ops people get up pretty early.

07:29
Alicia Nelson
Yes, and on the weekends too. On the weekends too.

07:32
Daniel Scharff
Okay, well, I really appreciate just the overall energy with which you can just recite through all of that stuff. Because I know there's just so much that happens in ops that you have to deal with, especially in this kind of a sales ops environment. So it sounds like you are all over it. And I also really think that's a cool acronym that you guys have. The kids might say that acronym slaps. There we go.

07:57
Alicia Nelson
It's actually taken off so you know, when new hires come in it's like part of the onboarding process because it is really unique and but it's really critical and it's been critical to kind of bridging the gaps of you know, when we do have issues really having kind of that collaborative feel that we're not sales and ops, that we're sales ops, logistics all together. We try to approach things as that so very collaboratively like kind of that one team feel so that we can support all that.

08:27
Daniel Scharff
That's fantastic. I really like that approach to it because otherwise it's just sales getting pissed at ops. When something doesn't actually get picked up. They're like no, you're messing with my numbers and why didn't happened like this is stuff that we all need to problem solve together and we all need to act very fast like a SEAL team. So I really like how you all are thinking about it and then can you just tell everyone a little bit more about. So good. So you for anyone who hasn't had the chance to try it yet.

08:53
Alicia Nelson
Yes. So, so good. So you actually launched as a cafe here in Minneapolis where so good See you is based. They had some locations in the Skyway and one of the our founders and current president Rita, she actually worked for Target HQ and she left there to really focus in on this cafe idea and business and through the cafe business. So that like I said started in 2014. There was this interest in all of their juicing that they did there. So they had the. What we now have is our juice shots, 17 ounce juice shots that we sell and then they also had cold pressed juices, larger 16oz bottles. So the idea was that you know, they wanted to really expand off of this juicing and juice idea.

09:44
Alicia Nelson
And so eventually the cafes closed in 2019 and then they really switched over to the manufacturing and focus on the 16 ounce juice line and the probiotic juice shots. There were a couple other iterations in there too. They had cold brew cashew coffee which I never got to try but I've heard was amazing. They also did a little work in Refrigerated baby food. They had a version of a probiotic lemonade. And then really all of those discontinued around 2020. And then they really just started to focus in on shots at that point in time.

10:20
Daniel Scharff
So, yeah, shots just also came out ripping from the pandemic. Right at the beginning. We couldn't get enough of anything that seemed healthy. Boost my immunity. Anything. Health and wellness oriented. They were doing really well. And then I also just have heard from a lot of people, including buyers, they like shots a lot because they're high price point, high margin, you know, don't take up a lot of space. So price or margin per inch is probably sky high.

10:46
Alicia Nelson
Yes, yes. And I actually started in 2020, so in July of 2020. So right in the middle, I guess more in the beginning of the pandemic. And it's exactly what you said. The growth trajectory from that point to. To now has just been amazing to see. And really just. It shocks me, actually. I was just talking about it yesterday. There's these little mighty juice shots that have just continued to have such accelerated growth is just. It's unbelievable.

11:14
Daniel Scharff
So they're pretty cool products. They're. I mean, just. They look really nice. You know, it's a clear bottle. Like, imagine a mini test tube almost, and just looks really healthy. You can see the product inside, which is very beautiful flavors like dragon fruit and this coconut man. That's kind of a teal color with the green cap that matches the logo that says so good for you. And it's a green heart. And it just looks, you know, it has the USDA organic sign on it as well. So it just looks really nice. Probably, like, for me, the first one that I would gravitate toward would be the energy one, because it's like, oh, okay, I could get caffeine. It has a hundred milligrams of organic caffeine. And it's. It's basically juice, and it's organic juice. It's 15 calories, something like that. And.

12:00
Daniel Scharff
And it has a hundred milligrams of caffeine. That's amazing. So it's a great way to get that amount of caffeine, which is almost as much as you would find in like a Celsius or. Well, it's a hundred milligrams. I think Celsius is 200. Red Bull is like 1:20. So you get almost as much as a Red Bull or like more than a cup of coffee and only 15 calories. And you're not having to worry about a bunch of sugar alternatives. You know, some of which I might not always love, so. Right, right. It's a pretty cool. That's a pretty cool skew.

12:28
Alicia Nelson
Yeah, yeah. So with. And that, you know, it's all organic, and actually, our number one seller is our immunity ginger cayenne. And so that is the one that, for a lot of people, I mean, including myself, it's one of my favorites. But it's got that spice, but then it also has that ginger flavor in there paired with the orange juice, and so it's a really awesome combination. And that one, again, like, for immunity season, the health and wellness, all of that, the pandemic, that's the one that people always gravitate towards.

12:57
Daniel Scharff
So that makes sense. And now let's tag in Emily. Emily from SPS Commerce. Thank you so much for joining us. Emily, can you please introduce yourself? And also, I know you are a customer also. So good to know you. In addition to getting to work with them so we can hear what are your favorites?

13:14
Emily Curran
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm Emily Curran from SPS Commerce on our product management team, focusing on our solutions that brands like. So good. So you are leveraging in order to receive all of those orders that Alicia mentioned from retailers from their customers and then ship them out and. And ultimately get paid. So, fun story. Yes. I think as Alicia was going through and telling the history of so good so you, it really resonated with me because I was a frequent customer of that cafe, so there was a so good so you location in the Skyway connected to the SPS office that I would frequent in the morning for a little bit of breakfast. And then I met Alicia a few years ago at one of our company events.

13:58
Emily Curran
And obviously, being a customer, being very interested in the brand, had the opportunity to not only get to know her and hear the story a little bit more, but tour their production facility. And that's where I was wondering, where did the cashew juice go? That used to be the cashew Bliss, I think it was called, was one of my favorites, but made sense in terms of the decision to just focus on those probiotic shots. So the staples in our household are the Detox pineapple, mango, and then whenever I can get my hands on the sleepy one with the cherry. Now, I'm all for that. They're really all good. I've tried them all. But I would say the Detox are staples for us.

14:35
Alicia Nelson
Yeah, the Detox pineapple orange ones are great for kids because they're, like, sweet enough. They don't have any of the spice or any of the, you know, maybe some of the other more exotic flavors out there. My kiddo takes one every morning. Other people on the team, their kiddos call it their Hulk Juice or their.

14:51
Emily Curran
Yeah, that is actually what my daughter calls hers.

14:54
Alicia Nelson
Yeah. Yes, yes. So, yeah, that's another great one. And that one's great for summer. You know, as people are out at barbecues and having some cocktails and things like that. It's a great way to start that next morning with a shot of detox and get ready for the day. So, yes.

15:10
Emily Curran
Yeah, I did. I did try the energy once, Daniel. So we actually, we had a. Our sales kickoff event this year, and Alicia. And so. Good. So you were really gracious enough to donate some of their shots for the group. And so backstage, before went on stage, we all took a shot of the caffeine energy one. And let me tell you, that was like, the perfect amount of energy that I needed to get through that.

15:31
Daniel Scharff
All right, I'd like to see a video of that. The whole team taking the shots. We do that with some of our partners at events, by the way, so we'll have to get in on that. Okay. So, Alicia, I think it's just super helpful for brands to understand sales ops because, you know, as for an early company, you're going to start winning accounts and getting orders, and that's very exciting. And you might be just hustling to get everything made in time, get it out the door, and maybe, you know, you're kind of making it all work by putting a band aid on everything. But as you grow and the orders start coming in faster and faster, it's very hard to scale stuff like that.

16:10
Daniel Scharff
And, you know, for a lot of people, that's where sales ops is going to start coming in as a discipline, as people who do that for a living and just really know how to get stuff done. Right. Can you just talk about, like, if. Yeah. For an early brand, when do you think they would need to start thinking about having the sales ops function in place?

16:31
Alicia Nelson
Yeah, I would say pretty quickly. Pretty, Pretty early. In the beginning, those initial people that are part of the company are going to be wearing a lot of different hats. But as that growth comes, as it will, you're going to need to be able to really have different departments and different folks that. That can focus on all of these different areas. The sales ops is really like, they're the main. They're the. They're the cog. And without a really strong, healthy sales ops team, you're not going to be able to execute those orders and get them to your customers on time and in full.

17:05
Alicia Nelson
And so my team, really, they're the ones that are, as we say, in the weeds in the day to day with all of the orders, you know, making sure that we're working with our true operations team and our logistics teams to say, hey, how are we doing? Are there any issues this week that we need to be aware of? How is the workflow at our3pl going? Any issues with things we need to be aware of there? And then we also have a lot of times where issues aren't brought to us beforehand and our customers are the ones that are telling us like, hey, this order arrived without all of the items on it, this order arrived late, et cetera.

17:41
Alicia Nelson
So that sales ops piece of what my team does is really vitally important to just making sure that those orders get to that customer on time and in full. And if you can do that, if you can get your orders to your customers on time and in full, you will be able to continue to grow those relationships with those customers and expand their business.

18:01
Daniel Scharff
You know, actually, for brands that I've been a part of, it was a pretty early hire, the first sales ops person. And I think, you know, the premise being it's just a lot of work. It's a lot of very, pick up the phone, you know, build relationships, get stuff done on a short term kind of basis. Because, yeah, when you have a truck that's sitting outside of a warehouse and now you're paying fees and they might leave, and if you miss that delivery, the buyer is going to be so pissed. And so, you know, just having people who are on it, right, and that is their job is to be on it and make sure all of the stuff that's supposed to happen actually happens.

18:37
Daniel Scharff
So what kind of skill set do you think it takes for a person to be really effective in that kind of a role?

18:42
Alicia Nelson
I was just going to say my team, I've organically grown my team and each and every single one of them has a lot of similarities, but also a lot of differences. But one of the biggest similarities is effective communication. So you have to be able to communicate in terms of communicating with a carrier or a logistics team or an operations team member. That speaks a totally different jargon than when you're talking to a customer or a buyer. And so being able to really know your audience, understand who it is you're talking to. So building those relationships and really understanding, okay, I know this buyer, you know, if I come to her and I Tell her that we've got an issue. If I approach it in this way, it's going to be much more received in this way versus this way.

19:27
Alicia Nelson
So really kind of knowing who you're communicating with, understanding the situation and communicating that information individually, not just a blanketed approach. They do a really great, fantastic job at that. And, you know, a lot of times there can be unhealthy tension that develops between sales and operations, sometimes separately. So that sales operations team really has to be holding hands, really has to be in line with one another to not take things personally. Understand that we're really just here to get the job done and focus in on that so that, again, those orders get to the customer with on time and info, as I've said, but really with as little communication, hopefully as possible, so that everything is just running smoothly.

20:13
Daniel Scharff
Right, so that's a great answer. And, Alesha, let me just apologize to you for all of the ops people, sales ops people in general, that I have actually been guilty of being pissed at when I'm sure it wasn't their fault.

20:26
Emily Curran
Right?

20:27
Daniel Scharff
What do you mean? The truck didn't show up to pick up the order. We're screwed. They're gonna be so pissed. So thank. Thank you and all of the lovely sales ops people out there for sponging a lot of that undeserved outrage.

20:39
Alicia Nelson
Yes, yes. We.

20:41
Emily Curran
We focus.

20:42
Alicia Nelson
It is a big focus of ours, is to make sure that we are not yelling at one another, that we are really taking the time to truly understand what is it, you know, and at the end of the day, it's just juice, Right? So we always do our best and we remind ourselves of that. Like, we're not curing cancer. We're selling juice. And so we, you know, sometimes have to take that pause to be like, okay, take that deep breath. And then, you know, readdress the situation with a more calm mindset.

21:11
Daniel Scharff
That is a very Zen way to think about it. I heard. I hope everyone took a breath and digested that. Although it never feels that way. Like, no, this is our. This is our dream. This is my business.

21:20
Alicia Nelson
I know.

21:20
Daniel Scharff
That's all I have is the juice. Give me the juice. Yes. But I do think that is very true and good for us to remember. And I'll. I mean, effective communication. I think, number one, making sure they know what they're trying to get done and communicate it very precisely. No room for misinterpretation. And then being persistent. Right. Because the role takes a lot of that. Like, you want them to be pleasantly Annoying right up to the point of. Of actually pissing someone off to try to get something actually done. Yes. So, okay, that makes a lot of sense. And then. Okay, so let's talk about systems a little bit, because in the early stage, you might not have much right in the.

21:59
Daniel Scharff
Like, you can actually get away with that in the early days, you may not want to take the time or just have any extra dollars to be putting a system in place. And like, yeah, you can get by for a while with that. Right. Like, the order can come in, you can send them an email back and take it however you want it, and you can figure out how to dispatch that order and all that. Right. But when you get to the scale that you guys are at, can you just take me through what is the process flow? Like, how do orders actually come in? What does the system do to all of that? What does that look like to you as a user of a system?

22:29
Alicia Nelson
Yeah, it's pretty amazing, actually. There's a lot of it that I do not understand. But I'm amazed at. But I'm amazed at. So through our relationship with SPS Commerce, our orders flow in directly into what we call the SPS fulfillment module. And so those orders come in there and they actually developed, it's called an adapter that lives within our systems and speaks to our inventory system, which is called Fishbowl. So it's great that we've got our orders flowing in via edi. Awesome. But then how do we get that information into our inventory system? We don't want to be manually entering in all of our orders because that's a nightmare. We probably have, you know, anywhere between 50 to 75 orders a week sometimes. Right. So we rely on EDI for that automation and that functionality to really flow into fulfillment for us.

23:22
Alicia Nelson
And then this adapter runs in the background every hour, on the hour, and any new orders that have come through, it just pulls them into Fishbowl for us. And so my team, again, they go through Fishbowl and then just make sure that did that order pull in correctly. Is all the information correct? There's usually no issues with the data flowing in from Fulfillment into Fishbowl. The issues really are more around the order itself. Either it's not hitting our MOQs, it's got the wrong date on it, the wrong delivery date, et cetera. So then that's where they take that time to review that and then go back to the customer to ensure that the requirements we have for our orders are met.

24:02
Daniel Scharff
We'll Be right back. Are you going to crush it on Amazon this year? It's such an important channel, but it's so hard to do alone. And most agencies are a total ripoff. We can't afford $5,000 a month and a commission on our sales. They just don't get it. That's why I love our partners at Daybreak. They are full service, meaning they do the creative work, the listings, the logistics, and of course, all the ads, all with the most reasonable retainer out there. I work with them personally. I'm so grateful we have such a good partner to recommend out to you. Our community, they do evaluate your product first to see if it might be a fit. So if you want them to have a look, email them startup cpg@daybreak agency and they'll do a free audit for you. Good luck, everyone. I gotcha. Yeah.

24:46
Daniel Scharff
Which does happen all too often. Like, hey, that's cases, not units. Or, yeah, we can't give you like, two of that. You actually have to order a pallet.

24:55
Alicia Nelson
Oh, I know. Yeah. And you could work with customers for years. And then I'll. They still sometimes are like, okay, we've been through this about 10 times over the years. Like, you know, like, you know, it's just again, then knowing your audience and communicating that information back to say, okay, like, we really need you to adhere to this and write the order correctly. So. But yeah, that's how we get the. I would say 95% of our orders into fishbowl for us and then fishbowl. Once those orders are in, all that information then transfers electronically to our 3PL. We do send an additional spreadsheet via email just to make sure that what they've received matches what we're showing. But again, that all flows directly to them.

25:37
Alicia Nelson
And so it's just with the scaling of a business, it's just to have that infrastructure built and created is just so vitally important. And you may not know what that. What you need in the beginning or what it's actually going to look like, and that's okay. We have really made improvements and changes to our process as we've grown, and there's no right or wrong way to do it. But again, going back to, you know, having an EDI partner that really can support you and help kind of guide that growth for you has been huge.

26:07
Daniel Scharff
Got it. Okay. So the orders are coming in electronically, which means whoever is placing the order, if it's a retailer, if it's a distributor, they can place the order, it goes through EDI and You use sps. So it's all coming in. SPS has the adapter into Fishbowl, which is your inventory management system. And so the order then can be reconciled against the inventory that you have at your warehouse, across your warehouses, across your three PLs, whatever. And then you can figure out how to actually assign inventory that you have to the order that has come in and transfer that information to the warehouse. Right?

26:43
Alicia Nelson
Yes. Yep. Absolutely. Yep.

26:45
Daniel Scharff
Okay. So then the warehouse knows, hey, this order is coming in. You need to fulfill it with this inventory. And then at that point, the warehouse is going to, you know, process that and figure it out and get it ready to get picked up. And then hopefully that happens. Otherwise your team is getting slack messages.

27:02
Alicia Nelson
Yes.

27:03
Daniel Scharff
In the morning or when they want to change the order, you figure that out. And then after that happens, then there's a whole nother exchange of info that's coming back in. Like, did it happen? Did what was supposed to happen actually happen? Or did they leave two cases sitting on the dock? Right.

27:18
Alicia Nelson
Yes.

27:18
Daniel Scharff
Reconcile that back up with the inventory and then back up with the sales order. Right. So that you can invoice the correct amount.

27:25
Alicia Nelson
Yes, absolutely. Yep.

27:27
Daniel Scharff
Okay. That's. It's a lot of steps. That actually is a lot of steps, which is nice, right?

27:31
Alicia Nelson
Yeah. Sps, actually, they created this. Emily, I'm sure you know what I'm referencing, but they created this slide that really shows kind of in, like, a circular formation, all of the steps that an order goes through or a product goes through in order to actually get out the door to a customer on the shelf. And it's. There's a lot of overlap. There's a lot of this has to go right in order for this to happen. But it's a really good way to just show the complexity of it, because it's not just, oh, you know, orders received, and you pick the order and it goes. You know, there's. There's a lot of things that can happen in between.

28:06
Daniel Scharff
So, Emily, let me ask you. Because you talk to so many brands, a lot of them are using sps, or you're talking to them about using it. And just. I mean, for anyone who's curious, SPS has been the biggest company in EDI for a long time, like, almost being synonymous with edi. So you are talking to everybody out there is this pretty common profile. And, like, you know, for the kind of people that you interact with mainly, are they, like, dedicated sales ops people? Are they people who are just trying to, like, take care of a lot of things? At the company when they're smaller. And what do you think about the attributes that were talking about before? Do you notice that in the people that we're talking to about communication and persistence?

28:42
Emily Curran
Yeah, I mean, I'm, I was secretly geeking out over this whole conversation as Alicia was talking. So to your point, like I engage with our customers with brands all the time and they do the run the gamut from like an emerging startup to a very well established organized enterprise and organization. So that is where there's going to be similarities, but there's also going to be those nuances and differences. And so I think what Alicia has described is very typical of what I would say is in that very small startup to emerging and growing small business where, you know, as she was explaining the process and the sales ops and all of that communication and that business process that's happening, I mean, that's got to happen no matter what.

29:24
Emily Curran
And then EDI can be that tool that brands are leveraging to help continue to streamline those processes and those growth. So that's where it's like, you don't necessarily have to start with EDI or even talk about edi because you still need to figure out everything that Alicia went through and part of your just general business operations. But there is going to become a point when, you know, you're working with these retailers that are going to start to require you to do edi. And that's where I think some brands, especially newer brands, might be turned off from that because it's foreign, it's new. They might perceive it as this cost or this technical barrier, but really once you get in the door, it's pretty simple because all you're doing is just automating the order processing. You're connecting the orders from your retailers to your erp.

30:11
Emily Curran
That's where, like Alicia mentioned, you're going to get even elevated benefits from edi. But then you can also connect those processes to your warehouse, your 3pls, any other parties, so that now you've got that streamlined audit trail. And then it just becomes having the right people in place to be able to monitor, understand what's going on and then communicate those exceptions when they happen, which, let's face it, they're going to happen. Nothing's perfect. But yeah, I would say it's very on par and on point with what I hear every day. And talking to our customers.

30:42
Daniel Scharff
What's the worst scenario you've seen of like, I cannot believe that brand is doing like 50 million in revenue and they are writing Orders by hand. And then they talk to you and they're like, okay, yeah, that would better.

30:55
Emily Curran
I haven't seen a writing orders by hand. But what I have seen is a warehouse that had no inventory management, no organizations. Like, going back to the sales ops that Alicia was mentioning, like, if you don't have someone that's looking at, like, your orders that are coming in and matching that up with your orders that you're placing with your suppliers, you're all of a sudden going to have this. This influx, this surplus of inventory, and where are you gonna put it? And that was literally this warehouse. Like, there wasn't even space in the aisle to, like, move and navigate. So, like, they were struggling with, like, I can't even get my orders out the door. I can't fulfill my orders on time and in full because I don't know where the product is. I don't know where the inventory is.

31:39
Emily Curran
So that I would say was the worst one I, I've ever seen, which. You can't solve that with EDI on its own.

31:45
Alicia Nelson
You.

31:45
Emily Curran
There's some other things that need to be solved there. But I think it reinforces the importance of having these specialized people and subject matter experts to help take a look at the full journey and process and really map that out.

31:58
Daniel Scharff
I was just imagining when you see in a TV show movie, someone going into the home of a hoarder 100% like, what, oh, my gosh, what is happening in here? Okay, well, it's nice that you guys hopefully help them clean that up and get everything into a system. By the way, one of the things that I'm most excited about is QR codes on probably secondary packaging, I would say, because as we move to that system, once that becomes the standard, and then you can actually, on, you know, secondary packaging, like the cases that things come in, you can actually imprint lot codes, Best Buy dates, that kind of information into it. I'm just really excited in all the additional information that'll be available through EDI systems like SPS Commerce, because of that. So that you'll just.

32:43
Daniel Scharff
Because you just have to ask that so much. Like, like, Alicia, you. Even though you have all these systems, like, you still have to check with the warehouse a lot of times, like, hey, like, how much is left of that one? Lot. And did that actually go out with this where. I mean, if they're scanning it right, you're probably going to have a lot more confidence, Alicia.

32:59
Alicia Nelson
Yes, absolutely.

33:00
Emily Curran
Yeah.

33:01
Alicia Nelson
And the QR codes on the external packaging piece, I know I think that's 2027. That's a rollout for all packaging, I think. But yeah, I think that the more information that we have kind of built in and tied out so that we don't have the manual piece as much, it just helps, right? Especially as we talked about scaling your business and we really have to talk about that a lot because sometimes were a startup company and we're not a startup company anymore. People from when were a startup company are still here. And so really kind of getting folks to start to change their mindset to evolve as we grow and evolve, that can also be a challenge. Right?

33:44
Alicia Nelson
So with automation, with being able to implement some of these new processes for that, there's also that adoption phase of those, that original OG group to bring them along and let them know like we're not losing what we initially did, we're just building off of it so that we can continue to grow. Because if we continue to do things manually and whatever it is, right, that manual piece can be like what you were saying, you know, having to reach out to ops to be like, how much do we have on hand of this, that or the other? You really need to be able to have reporting of that or access to systems that can tell you that.

34:19
Alicia Nelson
Because the manual piece is not only not a time efficient way to do things, but there can be mistakes that can be caused from the manual putting our fingers in it, right? A fat finger or clicking something you weren't supposed to or thinking you did something that you didn't. So the more you can have automation better, but also then pairing that with, like I mentioned, with our orders, a review process, you know, is the information being presented to me accurate and true? Okay, yes, it is. And then being able to trust in.

34:51
Daniel Scharff
That, yes, that is all true. And I'm just really excited for all of the automation coming and just having it all become easier to use and flow nicely just so that the benefits become so great that everybody is compelled to use all of these systems really right from the get go. And we just have kind of universal training truth. By the way, I was just remembering one of the sales ops guys that I had the pleasure of working with, Shout out jp.

35:16
Daniel Scharff
I could always count on him, which I loved, to just be friends with the people from UNFI and from Khe, which was so important because we did a bunch of stuff wrong and we needed them to forgive us for it and maybe not charge us things and maybe be okay when the thing didn't come on time and just you Know, I think his ability to be able to like call them and just, you know, be friends, honestly. And like at the trade shows, they're coming by the booth being like, hey, where's jp? I'm friends with, you know, was I think really one of the most valuable assets you can have. Do you, do you find that with some of your team?

35:51
Alicia Nelson
Oh yeah, absolutely. We, there was a trade show this last week in on the west coast and we have some west coast team members there and one of them wasn't able to attend and the feedback was everybody was asking for her, hey, where's, where is she at? You know, so that networking piece of really being able to connect with the unifies or the Kes or you know, the little mom and pops too that are taking your product in through a unfi or khi. All of those relationships are so huge. Our VP of sales, Jenna Sullivan, she's been with the company for, I think she just celebrated her eight year anniversary and she's like, people just know her by name and people have those friendships and connections with her as well as a lot of our other members of her sales team.

36:37
Alicia Nelson
So when we have that opportunity to get in front of and really just talk to. Right. Not be on a call, not be presenting, but really just talk to these people one one. Those connections are so important.

36:49
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, I really believe that. I used to be a management consultant and you know, they bring you in for some problem at a client that doesn't really want you there and you're there, you're like doing project management across 20 different things. And they're like, who is the person who actually became friends with the client? The one person in that one department. So that despite all the 20 things they have to do today, they're going to make time and actually give you the update that you need. That was a huge skill in consulting, as I really learned that there.

37:16
Daniel Scharff
And even like, but you know, take like someone like jp, he instinctively is going to try to get on a phone call with someone there and he's not just going to introduce himself, he's going to pitch them basically our brand, even though we're already working with them because he wants to make them a believer, you know, just a full supporter. So we would treat them like a buyer or like an investor. Just someone we want totally buy in and care about us and the brand. And maybe, you know, sometimes that curry is a favor that you might desperately need.

37:42
Alicia Nelson
Yes, yes. We actually carry around coupons with us as a sales team. So like anytime we're anywhere, whether it's a customer at a store or we're at the airport or wherever we're at, if somebody is like, oh, so good. So you know, you can start to have those conversations. Some coupons, you know, go check us out at your local retailer. I know Jenna. I was on an email earlier today where she was talking with a new buyer at one of our customers. Again, a customer we've had a long established relationship with, but he's new to the desk. And so she's just really being honest, like, being a human with him and saying, like, I used to juice. And, you know, because the. The new buyer was saying, like, oh, you know, juicing is just terrible. It tastes awful.

38:24
Alicia Nelson
And gravitating towards our shots, because you don't have to worry about the juicing. You can take one of our shots and get all of the health benefits with all the flavors. And so, you know, Jenna was just kind of reiterating that, you know, hey, I did the same thing. I went through the juicing phase, and I tried all these different versions. And so her just really saying, you know, I've worked here since this brand started because I believe in it and I believe in the product. I think that's something that's just another layer to really kind of walk the walk, Talk the talk.

38:53
Daniel Scharff
All right. That is so good. So you see what I did there?

38:57
Emily Curran
I did.

38:58
Alicia Nelson
Yeah.

38:59
Daniel Scharff
Thank you. I just thought I could sneak one of those in. That's so good. So you obviously know a lot about sales ops. I was wondering about KPIs, like, how do you guys hold yourself accountable? What do you strive for? You know, if a brand's thinking about setting this function up as they grow like a sales ops, what's a reasonable metric to try to attain? Whether it's about on time, in full, or what? Yeah. What do you use?

39:24
Alicia Nelson
Yep. So we have three different sales KPIs that we hold ourselves to. It's key customer development, increase velocity and drive distribution. And every single one of those, we, as an individual sales team member, we write our annual goals for ourselves to tie back to those top KPIs. So again, in all of the work that we're doing in the day to day, week to week, month to month, it's all working towards flowing into our goals, which then flow into our KPIs. And so it's a little hard for folks at first to say, well, I just send out sample shipments. Right. What does that have to do with, you know, key customer development? Right. And so really talking with my team, individual team members to kind of break that down. Yes. What do you do in a given day?

40:14
Alicia Nelson
But then, you know, getting them to see that everything they do in a given day really does somehow relate up to these KPIs. And, and all of that work is extremely important not only to the success of the sales team but to so good. So you overall. Right. Everybody has to really understand what their role is and how that role is a part of all of the other roles. And with that whole of all of the roles together that really builds up to make us successful. And without everybody kind of having that mentality, you can get unbalanced. And so we're really fortunate in the fact that all of our team members, they give 110% of themselves to their roles and they believe and have so good Soyuz best interest at heart.

41:04
Alicia Nelson
So that's how we do it on the sales team is really taking what each individual team member does and rolling that their goals up into those KPIs so that they understand I am important here and my role is important. The work I do every day is important because it drives the success of this team and the company.

41:21
Daniel Scharff
It's so important. And I mean like the. Even sending a sample out is an absolutely critical task. And I mean I am a crazy person. Anyone who's worked with me knows that like if there's some big buyer that wants a sample, like I'll run to the mailbox, I'll get it out that day. It'll have a personalized note on it. It's going to beautiful. It's going to have the very latest lot codes that came in, not the thing from a month ago because the fresh is the best and it's, you know, and that's what I would do. And so for somebody in sales ops who's sending that out, I want them to feel that same way. And it sounds like those kind of KPIs, I think really reinforce that of like, you're not just, hey, send out a box.

41:57
Daniel Scharff
I sent out a box like, no, this. It matters so much. Every single one of these matters so much. And I don't suggest anyone feel as crazed about it as I usually do.

42:06
Alicia Nelson
We do that still. We have that hot off the press request and it's like, oh my gosh, all hands on deck. We have an amazing sales and marketing coordinator that handles all of our sample shipments for us. And to go back to what you're saying, it is sometimes that first exposure to our brand Right. So we are meticulous on how we pack that box, how the shots are faced in it. So when they open that up, what is their first impression? Right. First impression really can make or break things. And so, again, it's the freshest product we have. The label looks pristine, the cap looks perfect, Everything the box is awesome. So that person is getting that full experience.

42:43
Daniel Scharff
I love it. And I also think it's important for people to hear, you know, you're part of the sales team. It's, you know, often sales ops functions could kind of go either way because there's a heavy ops component. If you meet the people who do sales ops, they have skills that could actually be a really good fit in either department. I personally like sales ops being part of sales just because it feels like it is more sales driven to then really just be hounding on getting the orders filled in the right way. People want to hit their numbers and grow and keep the customers happy. So it feels like actually a little bit more in sales than ops, but it just requires so much of the dance between the two and having a good relationship with both.

43:24
Daniel Scharff
So I really like how you were talking about that. That. So, Emily, I want to come back to you and just talk a little bit about, you know, because you were working across so many companies, what would you wish for everybody just to know about these kind of systems and EDI in general, or SPS as they're starting to grow, based off all of the conversations you've had?

43:42
Emily Curran
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think first and foremost, what I'd want people to know is like, this conversation that we're having right here. Like, everything that Alicia has talked through is why SPS exists. Like, are we an EDI company by nature? And is that what people mostly know us about? Yes. But at the end of the day, what we're trying to do is power these connections forward, to move commerce forward, move these businesses forward. We really view ourselves as an extension of the so good. So you team of our customers teams. And so getting this level of detail and truly understanding what are their business processes, what are their challenges is uber critical. So that we can not only deploy a solution, but deploy a solution that actually matters to their business and is going to help them achieve these goals.

44:35
Emily Curran
So that's maybe first and foremost what I'd want people to know is it when you think of sps, it's not just edi, it's we really care about our customers, their success, how they're performing with their retailers. And I, again, one of My favorite parts of my jobs is building these connections like I have with Alicia and seeing the success and the progress of these brands grow. And then two. And I think I talked about this last time with you, Daniel, in terms of like EDI101, but it really should be a crawl, walk, run approach. And for many of our customers, especially these emerging startup brands, they're going to be using Excel, they might be using QuickBooks, you might be using other systems here or there.

45:16
Emily Curran
So going full in and investing in a whole new tech stack and automating all of your processes is not something that you need to do out the gate. I really like how Alicia explained it. Where it's take a look at what your needs are and where you're at and slowly step into that and that's where I think we can help too. In terms of no matter where a brand is at their journey, whether they just need quick compliance to be edi, to check that box so they can sign their retail agreement, or if they're established with several connections volumes taken off their products flying off the shelf and now they need to look at scaling.

45:54
Emily Curran
That's really what we're designed to do is really no matter where that brand is at, it's our journey, help meet them where they're at and make sure we're walking alongside them to make the right recommendations and support them.

46:06
Daniel Scharff
I love it. I really appreciate that. And I think it's something that you can forget about. A lot of companies that are out there, especially ones that kind of loom large out there, you're just like, oh, I don't know. But. Really? Yeah. I mean, most people that I know in this industry and I get to meet, a lot of people care a lot about what they do and are not just robots automating data exchanges, but rather they care. They care like probably more about the people even than, you know, anything else.

46:33
Emily Curran
In the sense of the human element is really important. The whole time were kind of going down that thread on like technology, automation, like, I get it, definitely where the world is going. But at the same time, you can't underestimate or forget about the importance and the power of that human connection.

46:48
Daniel Scharff
Yes, yes, I totally agree. Okay, cool. So as we are wrapping up here, I just also want to just kind of remind everybody and there will come a time, if you don't already work with retailers that require edi, but some of them will be. And the reason for that is like they don't want to. If you're a small fish and they're a big lake. They don't necessarily want to be getting specific emails from you around your order. Right. So some of them will require it. I think it's good just to kind of be prepared for when that happens. So, you know, whoever you're going to work with just. I would start the conversation early so that if you need to in a pinch, check a box that says you're EDI compliant, then you can do it.

47:30
Daniel Scharff
And then you can try to make that happen pretty quickly. So that just a tip for everybody. And yeah, I think Alesha. So I know people can also check you guys out under the website on sogoodsoyou.com any other tips for places people can support the brand and try out these lovely juice shots?

47:51
Alicia Nelson
Yes, you can follow us on Instagram. We're also on LinkedIn, so feel free to find us on there and follow along. Lots of great stuff, lots of great content coming.

48:00
Daniel Scharff
All right, perfect. Thank you both so much. We really appreciate your support of the community and helping all of us learn together. So thanks again.

48:09
Alicia Nelson
Thank you. Appreciate it.

48:12
Daniel Scharff
All right, everybody, thank you so much for listening to our podcast. If you loved it, I would so appreciate it if you could leave us a review. You could do it right now. If you're an Apple podcast, you can scroll to the bottom of our Startup CPG podcast page and click on Write a Review. Leave your company name in there. I will try to read it out. If you're in Spotify, you can click on about and then the star rating icon. If you are a service provider that would like to appear on the Startup CPG podcast, you can email us@partnersartup cpg.com lastly, if you found yourself grooving along to the music, it is my Band, you can visit our website and listen to more. It is super fantastics.com thank you everybody. See you next time.