Corporate Gifting and the Impact on Pipeline Performance - with Kris Rudeegraap , Co-Founder and Co-CEO Sendoso

**Ray Rike** (0:00)
Hello, I'm Ray Wright, Founder and CEO of BenchMarket, and your host of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast. We talked to a wide variety of the top B2B SaaS and Cloud thought leaders, CEOs, executives, investors, and people just like you to discuss the metrics and benchmarks they use to make metrics informed and benchmark validated decisions. Now, on to today's show. Welcome to today's episode of the Metrics That Measure Up podcast. Today, we are joined by Kris Rudeegraap, the co-founder and co-CEO of Sendoso. We'll be covering four primary topics with Kris today. First, the catalyst to founding Sendoso. Second, the current state of pipeline generation. Third, the impact of corporate gifting on pipeline generation and its efficiency. And fourth, the impact of corporate gifting on customer retention. So with that as a backdrop, Kris, can you please take a moment to give a brief overview of your journey to becoming a guest here in the Metrics, the Measure Up podcast?

**Kris Rudeegraap** (1:12)
Yeah, for sure. Thank you so much for having me. For those who don't know, Sendoso is a corporate gifting and direct mail platform. We help automate all of the extra effort that's involved with procuring gifts, shipping gifts, tracking it, all that good stuff. And I started the company about seven years ago, and I'm proud of that. Spent about a decade in software sales myself.

**Ray Rike** (1:34)
Wow. When I hear the word direct mail, it reminds me back, I'm a little bit older than you, to doing direct mail in the early 90s. That was the way we did a lot of demand generation, direct response mailings. But hey, let's start at the beginning of Sendoso. So what was the catalyst for founding the company? Give us the back story. The following is a public SaaS announcement. Has your company experienced the challenge of achieving efficient, profitable growth over the last few quarters? Are you interested in learning more about how SaaS companies use Metrics and Benchmarks to drive decisions that optimize growth and maximize enterprise value?

**SPEAKER_2** (2:11)
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**Kris Rudeegraap** (2:26)
So I was in sales and I saw it being easier than ever to send a gazillion emails out. I think this was about a decade ago, when the email sequencing tools, email automation tools were hot, and I thought, hey, in the next decade or so, email is going to be even harder to break through the noise. What are some ways that I can break through that noise now as a seller and get in front of prospects or move my deals through the pipeline faster? So I myself was write and handwritten notes, sending them out. I hear a dog bark on a call, I go to Amazon and order a dog toy and send it out. Or my marketing team even would have a swag closet that they allowed us to go into and pack swag up and send it out to prospects. And it all worked wonders. And I remember just like loving it. I just hated packing boxes and I hated the staying at the office till 7 p.m. after my workday of demos, trying to like, you know, get all those boxes out for the next day. So I said, hey, why isn't there a software platform and, you know, outsourced logistics that could just do this for me and integrate into the outreach of the SalesLoft tool or the Salesforce or HubSpot tool and kind of click a button and magically it happens. And I did a bunch of research, looked around and there was really nothing out there. So I said, hey, this is a great opportunity. And I went for it.

**Ray Rike** (3:43)
Well, I wish you'd have been around when I was leading sales organizations. Believe it or not, back in 2006, when the Xbox first came out, we had a holiday promotion that we actually sent. We bought like 20 of these. We sent the remote controls to our target economic buyers and said, if you'd like to take control of your real estate expenses, call us and we'll deliver the actual Xbox and have a conversation. So I love what you're doing. But let me ask you this. First time CEO, almost eight years now.

**Kris Rudeegraap** (4:15)
Yeah.

**Ray Rike** (4:16)
What's the most unexpected learning you have from this Sendoso experience?

**Kris Rudeegraap** (4:22)
Man, I think the passion for the problem, I think is, I've been obsessed with helping companies solve pipeline and helping revenue leaders, marketing leaders, and so I think still like, wowing over sending a gift or seeing a new creative gift campaign and still just loving it like it was day one.