Transcript: Amit Slutzky | Trullion | “I Left Figma and Went Into the Field — It Changed Everything”

Meeting Amit and his product background

Eyal David: [00:02] Amit, how’s it going? Very well, how are you? Excellent. I also kind of gave a heads-up about where I’m at, so tell us: Amit joined us as Director of Product at Trolion, so please tell us a bit about the stops along the way that actually led you to this conversation.

Amit Slutzky: [00:22] Okay, so first of all, let’s start with an introduction of who I am: my name is Amit, I’ve been working in product for almost ten years, I have three daughters, and my wife has been in the army, on active duty, for many years.

Eyal David: [00:40] We’ll encounter that in a moment later in the story, right?

Amit Slutzky: [00:43] Yes, I assume it will come up somewhere. So I started in the world of cyber, back in 2012, when cyber was still very, very much in its infancy. After that I moved to various other companies, whether in IT or a bit of travel tech, and three and a half years ago I landed at Trolion. I connected with my manager on the move, for the second time, so that’s always nice. And today I lead a product line at Trolion that serves external auditors, large audit firms.

Eyal David: [01:18] You actually skipped over a period when you were in the United States, right? As you’ll ask, we can expand on that too, which is also the topic you came to talk about. So maybe for a second, let’s put that aside. Maybe tell us for a moment what Trolion does.

What Trullion does and who it sells to

Amit Slutzky: [01:30] Sure. So Trolion develops products for the accounting world. Basically, there are two slightly separate product lines, but they connect together. One product for the office-of-the-CFO world, and another product for the external auditors world. Companies like EY, and other large firms in this space. Trolion was founded several years ago, and it’s an AI-first company; from day one we’ve had AI. At first there were solutions for lease accounting, and gradually we expanded the offering into the CFO world, zero recognition, and other new products. And a few years ago we opened a new product line for external auditors, and basically took capabilities accumulated over the years in the CFO world and said, hey, we know these areas meet at some point, so let’s take what we know from the CFO world and offer it to the external auditors world as well. That’s the product line I currently lead; I’ve been leading it for the past two years. Uh...

Eyal David: [02:46] Nanda, how nice. Uh, tell me, let’s touch on this a bit. I don’t know the industry well enough, and then we’ll come back to ours. So basically the customer is the CFO, in companies where basically the money flows from there, so it’s easy and also kind of the main focus, so you mainly focus on efficiency, right? Yes. And trust too, probably?

Amit Slutzky: [03:07] It started with... There was some compliance wave in the lease accounting world a few years ago, and basically the whole thing is very, very complex and takes a lot of time, so we said, okay, there’s AI, let’s make it much more efficient and also much more accurate. Basically the ability to read documents, extract information from them, and move them to the next stage of the process in order to generate the accounting calculations in a consistent and accurate way, faster and more efficiently.

Eyal David: [03:36] Right, there were lots of companies in this field, I remember. Glad to hear you’re still around and even expanding. Cool. Now we’ll flip the record for a second. So basically, during the role, you found yourself—you can talk about it—you found yourself in the United States, right?

Moving to the U.S. and the role close to customers

Amit Slutzky: [03:52] Yes, so I started at Trolion three and a half years ago. A few months after I started, suddenly my wife got an opportunity for a kind of relocation, only from the army to Washington in the United States. And I remember I told her, okay, let’s do it, I think it’ll be great. And when we moved to the United States, to Washington, I basically shifted from a classic product role to a go-to-market role, basically kind of a sales engineer plus, let’s call it that.

Eyal David: [04:29] You moved very close to the customers, basically.

Amit Slutzky: [04:31] Exactly. So I got very, very close to customers, and I met a lot of customers, and basically I took a product I had built and also chose it for customers. And that experience is one that really changes a product person's perspective, because it's not just features and discovery and very structured processes that we have today, that we do from Israel, relatively remote, to reach customers, but suddenly it's a different experience where you do discovery, but in a different way, and your goal is to sell the product here and now, and not just, okay, let's think about what our roadmap will look like in a year, in two years, in three years. So it's a very, very transformative experience. By the way, I recommend to every product person who has the opportunity to do something like this, it's very educational.

Eyal David: [05:31] I'll even tell you that we talked, exactly when you came back to Israel or something like that, and you said to me, hey, we were looking for a topic, we talked and all that, you said to me, hey, I actually gave a talk at the company, and there is a presentation, you called it, like, something with types of cultures, I remember, and we said, well, not every American is the same, like, there are differences really, let's talk about it, that's super interesting. I remember that the presentation also basically started with you, with travel, so I really connected to that. So basically, that's also the essence here, that's the main insight you discovered, basically?

Why culture and trust are critical for product people

Amit Slutzky: [06:03] That's one of the really significant insights I discovered. In the end, as product people, we need to be very, very connected to the market, and to create very broad trust with a lot of people. Whereas usually with R&D, we sit in Israel, there's an office, we drink coffee, there's an afternoon in the office once in a while, and we're able to make the connection, to connect very well. But when we get on a Zoom call with a salesperson, or with a customer that we're doing discovery with, we often don't really know how to create that trust with those same people. Now, when we don't have very high trust, we get into places where we either hear what we want to hear, or we don't quite understand the whole picture, and then we make mistakes, either in understanding the trends. And basically, one of the insights I had was, okay, so let's try to deepen the relationship, let's try to speak their language, so that we can actually get the full picture, so we can understand the little nuances, in order to either push things we believe in, or do much higher-quality and deeper discovery, and create a personal connection with those prospects, or customers, or salespeople, marketing people.

Eyal David: [07:36] Even a stakeholder, if you say it that way.

Amit Slutzky: [07:37] Stakeholder, that was one of the things that really helped me at Trullion, to create a very deep connection with go to market.

Eyal David: [07:49] So what we're going to do now is Amit is going to present the presentation, I don't know how we're going to put it, but basically we're going to go through something like this here. Okay, you can start running with it. I'll ask questions about it from time to time.

Amit Slutzky: [08:01] Okay, great. So first of all, why do we actually care about culture? Like, we all talk about cultures, and yes, there's always the... With Americans, don't talk about politics, and all sorts of very, very clear and obvious rules. But let's take it one step further. Meaning, we have a certain agenda that we want to push, we believe in a certain vision, and we want to create trust and an understanding of the business. We want to give all our stakeholders the ability to understand what's happening in the process, and not just be the end consumer who isn't involved in the process. This understanding of what we want to do, and how to get there, actually helps me a lot on a day-to-day basis, by understanding their culture, by being able to speak with them in a way they understand, and that's not something technical. Okay, these are the next items on the roadmap we're going to deliver in Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, etc. Rather, have the conversation, understand how they need to receive the message, how it addresses their things. And to get to that place, where we actually know how to speak with them in the same language, we want to understand a bit of their culture. I can give an interesting example from the world of AI, after all, we're all talking about AI all day long. So I had a business trip to San Francisco, and of course everyone knows San Francisco, and we started talking to people about AI, and everyone speaks to us at a very, very advanced level, and thinks about where it can go next, and interesting things and ideas, and everything is great. Then I went to meet someone from Kansas, and I met him in person, and I'm talking to him, and my feeling is that he, he understands that AI is something, but it doesn't really interest him. What interests him is, I want my people to be more efficient. The sexy stuff of AI and EVLs, and all the things, those buzzwords we use day to day, matter less to me, rather come help me and explain to me how I can be more efficient. Come help me explain to my people that AI isn't going to replace them.

AI, different customers, and what really interests them

Eyal David: [10:41] Say, and basically beyond the fact that he was probably more practical, although I'm not sure he was like that, but he was more driven to the outcome he was looking for. Say, you talked about culture, so basically in his approach, in his behavior toward you, what was the difference you noticed?

Amit Slutzky: [10:58] So his behavior was very different and pleasant. It was much more open than, well, those people in San Francisco, who knew everything, and they spoke in a very, very different way. They were very polite, but they spoke very differently when they wanted to teach. Compared to that guy from Kansas, or I can also give an example of someone from Tennessee, who was very opposed to AI and told me, “I don’t want AI to replace me, so come help me get the message across.” But they wanted to learn more, they wanted to understand more how they take this AI outcome and basically pass it on. How they help their people understand that they won’t replace them, but rather that they’ll just be better. And basically that perception was significantly different, but even if we look for a moment at the content of the conversation, whereas with the guys in San Francisco, or even in New York, this is usually done either at a professional conference, or a bit at some conference after-party, if the guy from Kansas, for example, it was in a restaurant. Or a guy from Ohio, whom I sat with two, three months ago in New York, over a lunch at an Israeli restaurant, and he started explaining to me what matters to him and to his organization with AI. And it was in a very, very significant way, much slower, much calmer, and much more thoughtful.

Eyal David: [12:34] I’m, like, running through the presentation as I go, and I see, wow, great presentation. So I see that you touched here, for example, on small talk, what people talk about, okay, so there are differences. So you touched here on Israel and France, and I’m running, I’m running, I’m running. So also in the United States, you say, obviously, it’s so obvious, like there are segments, so what did you find, for example, that’s different in New York compared to—I’m kind of messing with your presentation here, but give us, like, a, no, it’s great.

Differences in conversations: New York, Tennessee and others

Amit Slutzky: [13:02] I can give, for example, if we’re talking about guys in New York, for example, then a lot of the time the conversations will be around restaurants, a lot of the time the conversations will be around sports, around business, around money, a lot of the time. It’s true that a lot of the time they don’t talk about money in the United States, but when you create some kind of connection with people, a lot of the time it gets to money and investments and how much I’ve succeeded. On the other hand, a guy I met in Tennessee, for example, he talked to me about food, he talked to me about music, he didn’t talk to me about money, and money didn’t interest him. On another note, I have a very good American friend, who was also in the American army, he was an officer, he invited me over, when we lived in the United States, for Thanksgiving, to his home, somewhere in one of the southern states. And we get to his house, and he starts telling me about how his kids are doing, and how his wife is getting used to the weather, and suddenly I’m sitting there and saying, this is not what I was told about the United States, like in the United States I was told about very cold people, and you have the colleagues from work, that you’re colleagues at work, but you don’t meet them on a personal level. Suddenly I find myself in an open conversation with a guy from one of the southern states, talking about golf, talking about football, talking about hockey, and that...

Practicing cultural understanding day to day

Eyal David: [14:41] Coach, I’m basically continuing to read here, in the bullets you gave here, so basically you’re saying, first of all, that it’s a daily practice culture, you really practiced it basically, like Duolingo, every day you went and started conversations, and I’m curious to hear about that, and basically yes, the next bullet is, keep asking, listening and learning, so you were basically always in that kind of learning mode, what did you learn from such a thing, first of all?

Amit Slutzky: [15:06] That, what did I learn, First, we need to be very patient, And not to come in, And one of the key points I have in the presentation, I’m not saying the presentation, but, It’s basically, on the American side, in contrast, That basically, when Israelis speak, then, It’s okay that they’re direct, because it’s not that they’re trying to be aggressive, It’s not that they’re trying to tear you down, Or do other things to you, Rather, that’s the culture in Israel, be direct, And if we take that thing, for a moment, To the things I learned, So first of all, in the first few minutes, To be, for a moment, slowly, let’s understand the people, Because this isn’t some university where I’m talking to clients, And I tell them, okay, come learn about your culture from me, But rather this is something that needs to be built, and we need to be open about it, So as to listen for a moment, to understand their directions for a moment, And then remember that thing, Because if I remember that, for example, I spoke with someone from Alabama, And the next time I speak with someone from Alabama, it doesn’t mean they’re exactly the same, It means that we need to be measured for a moment, To understand what they want, how they speak, and to slowly open up, and to activate that muscle of gradually understanding who is standing in front of you.

Eyal David: [16:44] To be a product person. And tell me, what impact did that actually have? You basically go in there, go in there as a Sales Engineer, as we said, kind of the decider.

Amit Slutzky: [16:56] Yes.

Eyal David: [16:57] What impact did that have? Like, say you’re in some onboarding there now, you’ve been there for three months, you really got the people, started sampling this from here, that from there — what impact did you start to feel on your performance, basically?

How the Sales Engineer experience changed product work

Amit Slutzky: [17:11] That impact caused... If we look at it, let’s even take it one step more complex, because after a few months in the U.S. I actually moved into another role, the role I’m in today, and what I learned as a Sales Engineer was the ability to understand the culture, as I said, which later served me in my product roles, because when I was in the U.S., I basically took advantage of the situation where I was in the market, and traveled to meet customers many times, onsite, and I had several customers who lived twenty minutes from my house, and that was very, very nice, and basically I took what I learned as a Sales Engineer, to get to places with twenty, thirty, fifty people, all sitting in one room, and to understand for a moment what they’re talking about, and to understand the small nuances, and then zero in on the specific people I really want to talk to, and with whom I really want to check and do user testing, and talk to the champions, and talk to the leaders in the organization, basically, in order to build trust and business continuity, and learn new things, and understand the bigger trends. So basically I learned that I need to get into the room, ask the questions politely, slowly decipher the culture, and then I took that into my own places, and ask questions in a very, very open way, without people shutting down. And basically that’s how I was able to understand much deeper things.

Eyal David: [19:11] Yes, an example of that — what does it mean in a very open way so people won’t shut down? Speak, I think out loud, like it’s very helpful I think for product people, but it’s also very helpful for founders who are leaving the U.S. now, right? I’m reading here in the presentation, for example, that you really prepared yourself, basically, on context and stuff like that. Go on, thanks.

The customer session that revealed a deep product problem

Amit Slutzky: [19:37] I’ll think of, I’m thinking of a situation where, after I moved, I went back to being a product person, so I went to one of the clients, one of our big clients, and I sat in New York — it was in New York, we sat in some fancy office on the 80th floor in some... Yeah, sounds like you enjoyed everything, okay. I recommend it to everyone. And we saw that something in the product wasn’t working. That something in the product wasn’t working, we understand that in a certain way it can work, and like we felt that we weren’t stabbing, we weren’t getting at the problem.

Eyal David: [20:20] Wait, so take that for a second.

Amit Slutzky: [20:24] I felt that we weren’t getting at the problem in a good way, and on the one hand we don’t want to come and say, okay, this doesn’t work, okay? But in a very gentle way, saying, guys, come take us through it for a moment, slowly, step by step. And we found ourselves in a session that I think lasted seven or eight hours, sitting with users and persuading them to explain to us slowly the problems and where they were running into them. Now usually, especially with these personas, they don’t open up. From their perspective, everything is fine, they’re working, they don’t want to ask questions, they don’t want to raise any concern. Americans. Yeah. And suddenly, while we were sitting with them and going to have lunch with them, little by little we saw that things were actually opening up. Then one of them came to me and said, listen, you know, I noticed that above a certain amount, below a certain amount, it’s not worth working with you guys, it’s not worth working with the product. I told him, amazing, come explain to me why. And then we sit down, and an American usually doesn’t just start doing, like, he started doing a whiteboard session, and we started doing a whiteboard session with users, and he says to me, listen, if I do this and this, then it works great for me. If I do it this way, it doesn’t work for me at all. And basically this ability of an American to be very open and tell you, listen Amit, this could be better. And then he opened our eyes, and we started doing sessions with a lot, a lot of users, exactly on that point, and we discovered that this problem was very, very widespread. And nobody just told us that, because from their perspective it worked fine, and they just kept working around it every time. And this thing simply caused the product to improve significantly, which increased adoption by tens of percent. So how do you suggest formalizing something like that?

Eyal David: [22:31] Because, like, what you’re saying is basically, I happened to meet an American who was probably special, and then basically we waited, waited, waited until he opened up, right? So, like, patience is the main thing you’re saying.

How the right small talk opens real discovery

Amit Slutzky: [22:44] So it’s not just patience, it’s starting from... Not coming in and, okay, here’s the agenda, let’s begin. In New York, in the end, you arrive, and within a second they jump in and say, okay, come on, let’s start working. And it started with... I’m still in Baltimore at the football, okay? And it started with... I think it was also after some really, really good Baltimore game, and I started telling them about the game, and I think I was even at that game, and all that. Then he said to me, you’ve got a good team, man. Then I said to him, first of all, I think so, and second, why do you think that? Like, what are the chances of winning the Super Bowl? Then he started telling me, and it turned out he was crazy about football, and he follows all the statistics, and in the US statistics are a thing, everything has numbers and statistics, and then we found ourselves in a half-hour conversation. And we talk about that, and talk about that, and then we kind of got back to business, and then we managed to have lunch, and then we talked some more about football, and then little by little things opened up. Now, it won’t always work; with that specific person, it was very, very good and very interesting. We spoke the same language, we talked about what really interested him, and every Sunday he sits from one in the afternoon, Eastern time, and watches football all day. And that’s one of the things that this common language basically causes—it opens people up a bit. Now, if I had talked about Manchester United, there are even more Manchester United fans, unfortunately, that wouldn’t have happened. And that gap of talking about sports and being able to connect it led to something very, very big.

Eyal David: [24:40] Well, what they call schmoozing. Tell me, and I’ll take this for a second to a slightly different place: you’re basically an AI-first company, you mentioned that, how much do you work today with AI, basically inside the company itself? Tell a little about what it looks like on the inside.

How Amit and Trullion use AI in product work

Amit Slutzky: [25:00] In everything. In everything, of course the developers work with Cursor, and Claude Code, etc. etc.

Eyal David: [25:08] What would you say, sorry for writing, what’s the ratio, say, between developers and product people on your side, just out of curiosity?

Amit Slutzky: [25:16] Honestly, I don’t remember, but probably one to six, seven, something like that. But if we even take myself, how I actually use AI, there are a lot of things I use it for. First of all, all the kinds of vibe coding—if I have some idea and I want to be able to talk about it for a moment in a way that’s easier to understand, because we all speak in the area of stories, and what our objective is, and which KPI we want to move, it’s very amorphous. Even if it’s written in the best possible way. The ability to go and build some mockup in 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and then talk about it, is an ability that shortens processes very, very significantly. A lot of times I sit with designers, and we play with it together, and we build something, and within just a few days we can go and show it to clients, get some feedback, even if it’s not the final Figma that goes to development, we can be able to talk about it and understand whether the flow now, which you can see with your eyes, works? Does it not work? Is something missing? Are there things we thought would be good, but now that we see them with our eyes, we’re not sure? Tell me, and what about client ideas? So, client ideas too—basically the ability to use AI to extract the information is something Gong does, and all the tools, and Hub, that company does it. But there’s something even more interesting that I did. Basically I listen—I built myself some sort of information stream that takes calls from a lot of specific people that I’m looking for some keyword in, so I push all this information into Notion, and analyze it automatically, and it creates some flag for me if there are any new pain points, if there are pain points we’re already working on, because in the end, if we think about it, salespeople don’t always remember the whole roadmap, or don’t remember all the upcoming items. Being able to go and tell that salesperson, Hey, I heard that in this call, someone asked you about Feature A, and you told them we don’t have it, so pay attention, that feature is on the roadmap, it’s even in the current quarter, and it’s supposed to come out very soon, so you can go back to that prospect, or customer if it’s customer success, and basically you can see a broader picture, by losing information, and basically simplifying it in a way that I, as an end user, can see it in a more distilled way on one hand, and also much more scalable, I can’t talk to customers all day, or listen to every customer success call, and basically this thing helps me do that at a higher scale.

Analyzing customer and sales calls with AI

Eyal David: [28:33] Tell me, and since we’ve already touched on client ideas, how much did the distinctions around culture really boost your client conversations? What tips can you give there?

How trust with go-to-market brings product into sales calls

Amit Slutzky: [28:47] So first of all, it often even starts in organizations, and as a product manager you often need to go to customer success, who arranged a meeting for you, and to the salespeople, who arranged a meeting for you; once you have that high trust with go-to-market, it’s not a problem anymore. And today I probably talk to customers 5–6 times a week; there are customers I speak with regularly, our bigger customers, with whom it’s important for me to have regular conversations about innovation, and trends, and features, ongoing validation, but what actually happened is that salespeople started bringing me into sales meetings. There are big customers, relatively material deals, and they say, okay, we feel like this deal can somehow get a bit stuck, let’s bring in A, who will speak their language, speak to them in a way that understands their problems, know how to give them the answer, and also know how to create that trust one-to-one. In the end, when you put customers on for a long period, you don’t want to promise something you can’t stand behind. We all exaggerate a bit, but the ability to speak very directly and tell them, we’re exactly working on this thing—hey, and I recently did this in a sales call, where a customer asked a question and I told them, great, we’re exactly working on it, here, come see the Figma in the sales process. And the customer appreciated it, the prospect today is a customer, really, really appreciated that I said, wait, wait, wait, you’re showing me something now, before it’s even in the system? I told him, yes, you asked a question, I want to be honest with you, this thing is in progress, here, this is the direction we’re going in, and for him it was amazing; by the way, even after he became a customer, I talk to him now once a week.

Eyal David: [30:43] Wow, nice, tell me, and really, tell me, how do you think, give an example of that just for the sake of it, the Figma being so fast that you could show it—how do you think the product role is changing today?

How the product role changes as validation and building speed up

Amit Slutzky: [30:57] I think that... A: The whole industry is changing. I think that today product...

Eyal David: [31:03] Come on, let’s expand on the changing industry.

Amit Slutzky: [31:06] This whole industry, today, the tech industry is changing quite significantly. Our ability, from the moment we identify a problem that is fundamental, to execution and deployment, is shrinking very, very significantly. By being able to do validation much faster, we don’t need to go and think for weeks and build Figma and a flow; instead, we can run it in a few hours, go to a number of customers and tell them, guys, this is the pain point we talked about. Indeed, we looked at the data, it really does look like a significant pain point. Here, this is the direction we’re going in, and there are alternatives A and B and C here. What do you think? And that ability is, wait, to close loops much faster, and of course, with developers, developers are moving much faster today, and that really changes the whole industry, because it gives me, as a product person, much greater ability to do things I couldn’t do before, I may know how to design in Figma very badly, by the way, but the ability, with a few prompts, to build the process, show the flow, close it, and move forward and say, okay, my level of confidence that the feature will solve the problem has increased significantly, and that’s great.

Eyal David: [32:31] So velocity-wise, I understand. Tell me, what are the challenges on the other hand? Because, you know, with... with great power, right, if you’re much faster now, there are also challenges in that. Or you said that you conduct customer calls five or six times a week. Where are the challenges here? Because you said, I sit and design, I hop on calls, I kind of hear this, and I’m kind of thinking about your time, but what else?

The challenge: keeping collaboration when everyone moves fast

Amit Slutzky: [32:57] So first of all, my time, right, is very packed, but I think I... More than a year ago, say? I think so, but I’m spending the time much better. If before we had to invest x amount of time writing user stories, and PRDs, and knowledge docs, today I do it much faster. I, to be honest, stand and talk with Gemini, and write with it as I go, and do brainstorming with it, and iron out the details, and then go and do some quick mock-up, and all of that process is much, much faster. Where exactly is the downside of this thing? I think that in collaboration, because we’re moving much, much faster today, we still need to keep our stakeholders, especially, by the way, the internal ones, designers, developers, team leads, data, and DevOps. Basically, we need to create a situation where we’re all aligned, and not just two or three people racing very, very fast ahead and basically losing the connection.

Eyal David: [34:04] Now the question is how do you do that without drowning everyone in communication and meetings, right?

Amit Slutzky: [34:08] So it’s always, always...

Eyal David: [34:12] Yeah, but if before we would sit and plan together, or this, today it’s a blocker, right? It’s a delay, let’s call it that. So how are you dealing with that today? How do you sync everyone up, aligned?

Connecting engineers earlier to the problem and the customer

Amit Slutzky: [34:24] So a lot of the time, what I do is bring the development people into the process much, much earlier. What that basically means is that before, the engineers would get a relatively finished product, okay, guys, let’s do design, let’s do... Today, what I do, and it’s funny, because 4-5 days ago one of our big customers, on a project we’re working on, sent some message, and we wanted some clarification, and then I just send it to the developer and his team lead, saying, listen, I’m going with the client now, do you want to join? And then he says to me, oh, sure, cool. And then we sat together. Now, once they talk to the client, they understand the problem. They understand the things. So basically, instead of me being the bottleneck, Amit, who has to book meetings on the calendar and pass along the message, they’re already in the loop much earlier, they know the problem. By the way, from my side, what that gives me is more angles for a solution. Because basically, it’s not just Amit thinking about the problem, but Amit bringing in the designers, bringing in the engineers, sitting together, thinking about the solutions together, and shaping the solution together. So we take that thing, kind of this fast-paced run, to a place where we very much empower the engineers and very much empower the designers by having them already in the loop, they know the decision-making process, they can influence the decision-making process, and in the end they feel much more empowered, do you want to say? I also think empowered, but also that they made a significant impact, much more than I took a supplier and basically turned it into a feature, they feel like they designed this feature, that they refined the problem.

Eyal David: [36:22] Yes, that kind of answers all the nuances that were always in that handshake, right? So everyone is more engaged, you’re saying. Tell me, so in your opinion, is Trullion now looking ahead, or continuing to deliver at this insane pace?

High delivery pace, adoption, and what to do when features don't work

Amit Slutzky: [36:37] Yes, I think Trullion today—by the way, one of the things we hear from our customers is that unlike the competitors, you move much faster, and if there’s something we see coming up from the field several times, it can already make it into that same quarter if we think it’s significantly important. And the customers really appreciate that, I’m used to...

Eyal David: [37:04] Wow, that’s an interesting point. Tell me, and how is that in terms of adoption? Like when they throw tons and tons of features at you, at a pace you weren’t used to?

Amit Slutzky: [37:11] So honestly, AI and adoption in the enterprise world is something that... It’s a very big and broad topic, because I think everyone kind of woke up from the... The dreams... Not exactly dreams, because AI works and works and delivers very high value, but people understand that you also need to know how to implement AI in organizations. I can say that at Trullion we really have a methodology for how to implement AI and really how to teach people and how to do... Basically, to use AI in order to be faster and better, and not work for the AI. Basically, to use AI to be much more efficient.

Eyal David: [37:57] Wow, that’s intriguing, but actually I asked that from a different angle, I asked some... It’s really interesting, but from the angle of, now we’re Trullion, and we’re giving you users way more features, there’s suddenly noise, I don’t know, like we’re making announcements about tons and tons of features. In terms of usage like that, what do you see?

Amit Slutzky: [38:19] So what happens is that a lot of the time the features are integrated in a way into their workflows that makes it very clear for them to do it. Because I can’t put announcements on every single page in the system, that’s not reasonable. And it empowers the users a lot.

Eyal David: [38:42] You understand what I’m saying though, because the cheese is being moved much more frequently, if I understand correctly?

Amit Slutzky: [38:47] Right, and what really happens is you need to think very carefully about where it meets the user, okay? Because a ton of features can really, like you said, create some kind of overwhelming feeling for users, but if the feature meets the user in the place where they need to be, and in the place where they’re doing the work, then the feature has very, very high adoption.

Eyal David: [39:15] Exactly, what I’m thinking out loud is that the experience changes a lot around this.

Amit Slutzky: [39:20] Listen, companies like that that move faster, as a user I’m going to see a lot of surprises on my journey from session to session basically yes and no because on the one hand if you connect the feature in the right flow for the user, then they don’t feel it they feel something has been updated but they don’t feel like something is blocking them on the one hand. On the other hand, let’s go with the not-so-positive side, but on the other hand what that does give us is features that get released, they look at adoption very quickly, see that it’s not working, and weave them out or improve them in such a way that adoption suddenly goes up, and the next time we come in as a user, then there’ll be a surprise, fun, there won’t be after that, it’s very interesting, and then comparing data becomes more.

Eyal David: [40:16] Well, obviously you need to collect enough data; there are a lot of interesting things happening here. Well, what I think is, if you have any other recommendation or something to close the episode with, we’d really appreciate it.

Book recommendation: The Qualified Sales Leader

Amit Slutzky: [40:30] So, to be honest, I recently read a really, really good book. I’m checking the name of it right now. It’s a book about go-to-market and, basically, how to build go-to-market in an efficient and interesting way. And what it made me do was understand what processes, just like in product, where we have very structured processes, there are to actually build go-to-market with very structured processes that, on one hand, don’t overload the organization. Okay? If we are talking about POCs in the old world and today we’re talking about POV and how to do high-quality discovery and how, basically, to close entitlements and what’s needed and basically how all this combination between salespeople and sales engineers and the end check then between sales and customer success how this thing impacts in a very good way

Eyal David: [41:42] well Diana, hang on, let’s cut this a bit and then we can just say the name of the book and give the link hang on, I’ll tell you take it easy, take your time You didn’t even say that you visited 40 countries Okay, we’re not adding that at all anymore For me that’s the most important part

Amit Slutzky: [42:03] Okay, it’s called the book I read it’s called The Qualified Sales Leader basically someone who was CRO five times and how he gets to a startup and builds for them their sales processes and basically turns the processes into proof of concept for proof of value