Full Transcript

Cole Cummings (00:00)

What’s up everybody? Today we have Ethan Toth, Director of Sales and Marketing Operations at YCharts. Thanks for joining me Ethan, I’m excited for this convo

Ethan Toth (00:13)

Always happy to be on the Cole and appreciate you taking the time. Excited for today.

Cole Cummings (00:19)

Absolutely. So let’s kick it off. ⁓ Can you tell me a little bit about Y Charts just overall big picture kind of go to market strategy and growth that y’all have experienced recently?

Ethan Toth (00:34)

Sure. So especially at YCharts, a lot of what we focus on is really empowering financial advisors, asset managers to kind of have the best in-class research, the visualization, client communication tools at their disposal to not only support their clients, but also their own growth. So our growth and go-to-market strategy is really focused on combining a few different elements, everything from direct outreach, strategic partnerships. educational marketing, there’s definitely a lot that we focus on trying to meet advisors where they are at these different channels and also give them accessibility to us. So ⁓ definitely a wide range of areas that we’ll focus on. And especially for us, we’ve grown pretty much all of our segments in these spaces. So having both the advisors and asset managers, a really unique spot

Cole Cummings (01:13)

you

Ethan Toth (01:24)

certain firms.

Cole Cummings (01:25)

Yeah, awesome. as a marketer, you mentioned just educational like resources. ⁓ What does that look like as far as like, like, are you trying to teach retail investors how to like use the charts or build portfolios? What does that content kind of look like?

Ethan Toth (01:46)

For us, a lot of the content comes in a few different forms. We do have our own original research pieces that we’ll put out, blog pieces that are current with the market that are definitely utilizing Y Charts to draw insights and then communicate those. There’s definitely individuals that will reference these, by and large, really

Cole Cummings (02:05)

Yeah.

Ethan Toth (02:06)

on, again, those asset managers and the financial advisors. And coming out of that, yes, we obviously have content that is more driven to educating on the tool and different ways to use YCharts, but really try to just stay current with the market and try and give some direct applications where we can. So some of it’s pretty casual in terms of the educational elements of, these are the insights we’re drawing with YCharts versus very product specific

Cole Cummings (02:17)

Yeah. Yeah.

Ethan Toth (02:33)

times too.

Cole Cummings (02:35)

Yeah, I’ve found that, you know, tools like YCharts and Advizor Pro, the best content that you can share is the data that you get from your tool, right? Like sharing the insights that are relevant to your ICP, but come from your tool. So it’s not like, hey, this is a direct promotion of using us, but it’s like, no, we have this insightful data and we got it from our tool. You know?

Ethan Toth (03:03)

Exactly, and especially for us, you know, there’s a lot of times where maybe we have certain visuals that we’re, you know, incorporating this content and, you know, maybe someone else wants to use it as from an advisor lens to try and communicate to their clients. So there’s, there’s a few ways that, you know, people relate to that.

Cole Cummings (03:17)

Absolutely. I do have to say I think the Y Charts like visualization of data and y’alls just charts are some of my favorite across the market. I think y’alls platform just looks super clean and I’m a sucker for that. So how does Advizor Pro support your sales or marketing teams and identifying and reaching that target audience?

Ethan Toth (03:34)

you Yeah. So like I mentioned, you know, there’s a bunch of different channels, obviously, that we’ll go through and reach some of our ICP. But especially, you know, when we try to pinpoint, you know, hey, who would this be relevant to? Really trying to resonate well with the audience and get to that target as fast as we can is super important, both from an efficiency lens, but also just ensuring that we have enough resources to go after different opportunities. And I think Advizor Pro, one thing they do really well is kind of an extension of our go to markets almost in a way where, you we’re using that for the list creation to create these targets. We’re going through and leveraging a lot of the great data that, you know, your team is providing. And, you know, we can kind of use that to then apply what we’ve learned over the years for what our ideal customer profile is, some of the right fit elements that we look for and, you know, kind of target our promotional efforts towards that a bit better. And then outside of that, you know, going into the data, I mean, there’s so much that ties into having reliable data. as the success of a lot of your efforts. And so especially with AdvizorPro, we’ve had really current insights to be able to get down to these target criteria. And then it’s just really easy to apply all of that and access the data we need. So a lot of efficiency gains from that, but also just the reliability that ultimately is kind of the backbone a lot of our success down the road.

Cole Cummings (05:09)

Awesome, well I’d love to hear that. So generating lists in Advizor Pro, how do those lists and efforts help you connect with high-value prospects? Is that more of a tool for sales and the sales team, or are you using that in kind of marketing, targeting, retargeting as well?

Ethan Toth (05:32)

Yeah, it’s a good question. Predominantly most of our use comes on the sales lens and being able to find some of this criteria, but it has applications across, pretty much all uses across Y Charts. ⁓ Especially for us, if we’re starting at kind of a broader sense of is this particular piece of content or this feature going to be relevant more to say an RIA or a broker dealer, different ranges of advisors with experience. There’s a lot of different things that is accessible very easily. as a lever and because of that it gets pulled into a few different areas. So especially taking that like top-down approach I think is a lot more common and then obviously you know hey great once you have the big picture you know you want to drill down into some of the contact specific criteria whatever else it might be just a really nice balance reaching quality versus your quantity and getting to that faster so that, yes, from the sales side, it’s a lot of efficiency and our prospecting efforts, but also from, again, the marketing lens does help you make sure that the people that you’re hoping to promote certain content to, it’s resonating well with them, or at least you’re having a better chance at it.

Cole Cummings (06:49)

Yeah, no, I love how you said like a top down approach because I think, you know, that’s the way that that we do a lot of our marketing and outreach is, you know, filter like the broader ICP and target market and strategize a plan to attack that. But then taking that and siloing off different, like very specific verticals, creating content and different ways of outreach for those. that just, you know, it’s an inverted pyramid. Like you can get as small and as detailed as you want if you keep coming up with, you know, new ways to filter lists and, and new ways to target these individuals. So love that. Couldn’t resonate more. are there any specific examples of success or, or wins that you can share from using Advizor Pro?

Ethan Toth (07:42)

Yeah, I think the most tangible would be something that’s a little bit more again on the efficiency side. You know, with Advizor Pro in particular, there’s some really great things that I think, you know, you and the team do in terms of focusing on trying to make it easy for, you know, everyone to have the resource they need to go after and chase the opportunities they would like to. So for us, you know, in the past, there’s certain campaigns or right access to data that, you we might have to go in and manually rely on what our team has learned over time or something else. having a lot of this accessible and central gives us a really fast way to create repeatable and sustainable processes that allow to of scale without necessarily needing to do a ton of additional work. So I

Cole Cummings (08:32)

yeah

Ethan Toth (08:33)

of the successes we have are really around streamlining our ops processes in particular. You know, especially when we talk about going to events and which are, you know, again, a pretty big channel for lot of folks in the space that’s included.

Cole Cummings (08:43)

Mm-hmm.

Ethan Toth (08:49)

know, when you’re there, it’s a very time sensitive, you know, experience, So the faster can get to that and the more prepared you go into a conference, definitely the better. And we’ve had some, you know, good conversations at events and been able to, you know, build on them over time. And it’s been a good channel for us.

Cole Cummings (09:08)

That’s awesome. Are you guys using the map, map view feature at all to like plan, you know, conferences or traveling to certain areas?

Ethan Toth (09:17)

Yeah, it’s kind of interesting for us in particular. You know, we don’t have a lot of our direct users using the map itself. We predominantly as an org kind of centralized a lot of what we do with advisor pro and then kind of give our users the access to the results and the actual data that they need. So

Cole Cummings (09:36)

Got you. Yeah.

Ethan Toth (09:38)

a big kind of like distinction. ya definitely a little different than some of the wholesaler asset manager that adds their lifeblood in a lot of ways.

Cole Cummings (09:45)

Yeah. I get that. ⁓ So you mentioned processes. What kind of like automations and workflows do you have set up within Advizor Pro? Are you, you know, syncing data over to a CRM or what does that look like?

Ethan Toth (10:04)

Absolutely, that was really one of the best things within ⁓ our experience with Advizor Pro. And since we’ve kind of onboarded is we primarily operate out of HubSpot. And for us, the Advizor Pro and HubSpot integration has… pretty much been the backbone of everything you do with the Advizor Pro. Really within the Advizor Pro portal, our ops team will go in and use that for some more detailed use cases or something else, but our sales team really leverages all of the Advizor Pro info in HubSpot because of that integration. I think

Cole Cummings (10:42)

awesome.

Ethan Toth (10:43)

automations, especially the weekly updates and things like that, the team can set up the customizations that we can build within. Integration, quick shout out to Hesom who, you know, is a really integral part of, you know, being part of the support process and building out, know, things that are relatively, ⁓ maybe uncommon, he’s always willing to have a conversation, you know, figure out a use case. And that’s been

Cole Cummings (11:04)

Yeah. Yeah.

Ethan Toth (11:08)

great experience. And our team definitely uses a lot of that to target their efforts within HubSpot.

Cole Cummings (11:14)

Yeah, that’s awesome. I know that, you know, client feedback and ⁓ requests can be cumbersome. ⁓ But I think, you know, just from the tech side and development side of our product, it’s such a good way to understand the market more and just get more intel on how to make the product better. So I know like a lot of teams out there like, yeah, it sucks. We don’t want to do one-off things for every single client. my gosh, you have good ideas. But a lot of these client feedback ideas that come in turn out to be like the best parts of our platform. You know, hey, I think you guys should have this filter. Why don’t you? And we’re like, ⁓ my gosh, we didn’t even think about that. You know, and then it’s added. Shout out to Hesom and the team. You know, they go above and beyond and. our clients are very happy because of it. Okay, talking about outreach, are you guys using LinkedIn as part of your sales outreach strategy?

Ethan Toth (12:09)

Yeah. Absolutely. So for us, LinkedIn is definitely a core channel. You know, again, there’s a lot of different channels that we might leverage, but especially meeting our market where they are. both asset managers and also the advising space. There’s a decent audience on LinkedIn. So yeah, it’s a big part of what we do. And in a lot of ways, it’s almost complimenting Advizor Pro. Again, the data that feeds into HubSpot from Advisor Pro through the integration, that’s great. And it gives us access to a lot of the info that we leverage day to day. But LinkedIn is a great way to kind of build those relationships, add on top of that, meet folks where they are, whether it’s connecting with them. adding content and showing things that are relevant that could with them.

Cole Cummings (13:05)

Yeah.

Ethan Toth (13:06)

there’s lot of different tactics there, but it is very much a compliment to what we do with Advizor Pro. I think one of the things that is ⁓ helpful in a lot of ways is Advizor Pro.

Cole Cummings (13:10)

So quick.

Ethan Toth (13:20)

giving access to potentially finding some of these connections on LinkedIn or spurring your interest in wanting to learn more about someone and taking that opportunity to connect has been really valuable.

Cole Cummings (13:32)

Love it. ⁓ It always blows my mind because it seems like a no brainer, but I still talk to a lot of companies, firms, whoever that don’t use LinkedIn to reach out to people. And I’m like, what are you doing? Everyone’s on there. that’s where the market is. I know you don’t want to do social media, but send some DMs. It’ll probably help.

Ethan Toth (13:46)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it’s such a weird experience too because… Right. Yeah, especially trying to get stronger conversations and building that relationship from the start. It’s

Cole Cummings (14:08)

Yeah.

Ethan Toth (14:08)

very much a different game when you’re taking that approach. And especially, you know, in our industry where we do have so many DBAs and there’s a lot of different organizational elements, you know, the Teams data set and Advizor Pro being one of them, you know, that doesn’t always show up in LinkedIn, right? Maybe they more a different, ⁓ know, association or whatever it might be, that gives you so much

Cole Cummings (14:30)

Yeah.

Ethan Toth (14:31)

insight in terms of learning about that and where to kind of, again, start building that relationship too.

Cole Cummings (14:37)

Yeah, absolutely. It’s funny too, because we get our breakaway advisor data in real time. As soon as someone files that they’re jumping firms or starting their own RIA, we have that data. And it’s funny how many times I’m building lists or checking things and I’m cross-referencing breakaway advisors to their LinkedIn. And we have that knowledge like before they’ve even posted it on LinkedIn. And I’m like, that’s kind of cool, because, you know, I want to call out this breakaway advisor, but I also don’t want to leak any data that like isn’t public knowledge yet. You know,

Ethan Toth (15:17)

Yeah, and LinkedIn is an interesting place too because everyone has their own way that they kind of approach their profile and their outward perception of it. So, you know, some people are very proactive in their updates and you might even find things on LinkedIn that point you in a different direction or ⁓ maybe they share a post that’s interesting that kind of ties into the breakaway too. So it’s a big part of the industry for sure.

Cole Cummings (15:40)

Absolutely. Okay, in what ways does Advizor Pro help you uncover new opportunities or prospects that may have been difficult to find through other channels?

Ethan Toth (15:55)

Yeah, I think the biggest dynamic of this is when you do have the automation and again, you have efficient processes, right? It gives you a little bit more bandwidth to go and. find these opportunities you might not have been able to want to pursue, but you kind of had gut feeling that they were out there. And it gives you the opportunity to kind of leave some of these traditional search methods, right? Obviously, there’s a lot that folks can go and find on their own, but it takes them time. And that’s really the most important when you’re trying to get through this and on leads too. So I think the biggest thing is that deep visibility into not only the the company level dynamics, but also the contact level dynamics. And once you understand those profiles and you can recognize those patterns, great. You can set up automation that make it very easy to come back to those. And so our big advantage out of that really is trying to find some of these niche segments and boutique firms that we might not otherwise have been able to find. And now it’s easy for our team to go there because we can build out that logic for them. So there’s a ton of examples

Cole Cummings (16:58)

Mm. Yeah, that’s awesome.

Ethan Toth (17:05)

that. And again, I coming back to the DBA data set. That’s just such a powerful tool that historically is really challenging and manual for firms to maintain. that especially has been different in how we approach these conversations and kind of uncover those connections.

Cole Cummings (17:15)

Yeah. That’s awesome. So I would say, you know, Ycharts is definitely one of our clients that like takes full advantage of Advizor Pro. And I feel like you guys are like actually utilizing the tool the way that I wish most clients would, you know, like there’s so many different features and things that you can do in Advizor Pro that, you know, is almost like overwhelming to someone that doesn’t have just Nodgik of ⁓ Nodgik knowledge. and logic of, you know, automations and processes. So what would, what like features in Advizor Pro stand out the most? Like, is there a particular tool that’s become a must have or, you know, what are your favorites?

Ethan Toth (18:07)

Yeah, we talked about a few of them, at the highest level, there’s just so much that exists and you kind of need to take it in phases almost. And I think for us, the first phase of… quickly became our favorite feature for a long time was the integration. It’s a lot of upfront work that goes into building a data provider and a CRM integration, especially HubSpot being that there’s a lot of nuances. But especially when that’s there and you can keep your reps centralized in your CRM where they’re already spending most of their time, there’s so much efficiency gains that come out of that and just extra opportunities. connections that you’ll build over time, whether or not you’re

Cole Cummings (18:50)

Yeah.

Ethan Toth (18:51)

going through and trying to understand your sales territory, for example, as an account executive. Are you leveraging this to understand the breakdown of the prevalence of different custodians? Are you going through and trying to figure out, you mentioned the map earlier, right? If you’re already in an area and you want to go see some offices, you have

Cole Cummings (19:07)

Yeah.

Ethan Toth (19:10)

at your access pretty too. Building those targeted lists and prioritizing outreach in Hub Spot wouldn’t be possible without the Advizor Pro integration. And that’s definitely a core. Outside of that, I would say by far the biggest one is the DBA and Teams data set. You again, such an interesting dynamic. And it’s constantly changing, when we’re in an industry that not only do you have these registered entities like the RIAs and broker dealers, but you know, when you start splicing the OSJs versus the DBA and more of

Cole Cummings (19:33)

Yeah.

Ethan Toth (19:44)

the layer under that, how are they associated to these other firms that are registered? I think that’s been super powerful because otherwise, ⁓ you know, you lose sight of that. Yes, you can have access to teams and see them quickly, but you’re probably going to care a little bit more about how are they affiliated with their parent companies?Does that impact how you might approach that conversation? And so a little bit of a niche answer for the DBA one would be the parent company info that AdvizorPro can kind of provide there. That’s really cool and has been pivotal for us.

Cole Cummings (20:02)

Totally. Yeah. Well, I love to hear that. Yeah, I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head like, you know, you can’t just reach out like if you’re targeting LPL, what are going to do email, you know, 50,000 people like now you need to know the teams that make up LPL so that you can get in touch with the decision makers, right. And, you know, I think that’s a super valuable data set that, you know, not enough people are using so It’s awesome to hear that you guys find that valuable. ⁓ So tell me a little bit about how your team goes about building lists in Advizor Pro. Don’t give away any of secret sauce, but I’d like to hear about kind of the strategy there and what that process looks like.

Ethan Toth (21:07)

Of course. Yeah, we talked about this a little bit earlier on, but really that top-down approach is a great mindset to have and organizing. your thoughts into two layers almost, right? Because there’s a lot of information out there. And if you split it into that and you start thinking at the high level for the firm types, the category, ⁓ what kind of ⁓ custodial relationships, things of that nature that you want to use as your starting point, then you go underneath and try and find your ICPs at those firms. That adds in such a… versatile approach that can fit pretty much any strategy that you’re trying to do. So it’s a really good balance, especially when you’re trying to promote quality at scale in an environment where, you know, when we talk about sales efficiency, there’s a lot that goes into that and it’s ever-changing. So when you keep asking salespeople to do more and more, you know, it’s always good to try and at least…

Cole Cummings (21:49)

Hmm Yeah.

Ethan Toth (22:02)

support them in ensuring that we’re going after the right folks. So I think that is the general mindset. And then in terms of, you know, specific criteria, we mentioned a little bit about the custodial relationships, the firm registration types, you know, those have been really core aspects for us.

Cole Cummings (22:18)

right. So what are the most successful channels for your sales and marketing outreach? that cold calls? Is that cold emails, webinars, events? ⁓ You know, where do you see the most value?

Ethan Toth (22:34)

Yeah, I feel like the answer to this change is pretty much every day too. You know, it’s very much one where I don’t think that there’s ever going to be a channel that is consistently performing over time and we can always rely on it. And for us, we’re definitely more omni-channel. know, we take a very multi-touch approach and really combine, you know, our SDR efforts with maybe some of the personalization and, other campaigns that they’re already working on or our marketing team is working on. And the educational content alongside that with the webinars or, you know, any of the original research we put together, a lot of that gets referenced by the sales team.

Cole Cummings (22:47)

Yeah. Mm. Yes.

Ethan Toth (23:08)

kind hard to say which channel in particular because in some ways it’s cyclical. know, it all feeds back to the same narrative and the same ⁓ value that you’re providing. But at end of the day, there’s also not much that replaces in-person and relationship building. events are still a very big part of our, ⁓ you know, focus.

Cole Cummings (23:11)

Yeah. Yeah.

Ethan Toth (23:29)

And again, for us, know, Advizor Pro, they really do help make everything as targeted as it can be when we are reaching them at each of these channels. But I would say definitely the in-person events ⁓ and kind of trying to tell the same story and all the other channels we’re using ultimately will give us a better chance of starting the conversation.

Cole Cummings (23:45)

Yeah. Absolutely. I think it’s so important for a team to have synergy between sales and marketing ⁓ Throughout my career. It’s insane that I’ve experienced so much like butting heads With sales teams, know, we’re not getting enough leads or we need different content or I can’t sell because you didn’t make that video and like when you figure out how to weave sales into

Ethan Toth (24:05)

Mm-hmm.

Cole Cummings (24:18)

pushing content or targeting people that we’re already retargeting in different touch points. You know, I think that’s where you ultimately find the most success is kind of having just a one brain approach to all of your content and outreach at the same time. So that’s awesome. Okay, last question. ⁓ You know, there’s other options on the market. I’m sure that Advizor Pro wasn’t the first ⁓ and only option. So what made Advisor Pro the right choice for Y Charts over other tools or providers?

Ethan Toth (24:59)

Yeah, it’s as much as we like to think it’s a niche space, there’s always going to be alternatives. And for us, we definitely have seen a few other data providers over time. We’ve used others before in the past before Advizor Pro. And I think really the biggest differentiating factors for us would be, we talked about this HubSpot integration, the level layer of support, really the entire team at Advizor Pro. is very nimble and open to feedback. And I think that mixed with all the strong data quality, the positive experience we had throughout the sales process, supporting potentially some test use cases and some weird nuances we might have had. I know we’ve shouted out, hey, some ones already, but we’ll give them another one for this in particular because. you know, when you work with integrations and especially you have some legacy things that are coming over, you really do want to make sure that, you know, it’s as seamless as possible and that you’re planned properly for that launch. And that confidence that we had throughout the process was a huge differentiating factor. And even since, you know, we onboarded, I ⁓ do think that the Advizor Pro support has been by far one of the biggest differences we’ve seen and the consistency, right? You know, there’s something to be said about being a reliable provider that, you know, truly does want to build relationships and go through and build the product for their market versus what they think their market wants, right? And this is one thing that, you know, especially YCharts, we kind of do a similar process where if what you hear from your clients is probably going to be what should be your next…

Cole Cummings (26:15)

them. does.

Ethan Toth (26:36)

product enhancement most of the time. And if you’re hearing that enough, you mentioned it earlier, that’s where Advizor Pro’s new releases sometimes come from. And we’ve been the source of a couple of those over time. We’ve benefited from the source of others. And it’s just nice to kind of have that support mixed with the reliability and the quality of the work too.

Cole Cummings (26:38)

Totally. Yeah, I think, you know, it’s so important as a data provider or just a software tool in general, especially when dealing with enterprise clients and these companies that have their system and processes in place already, to have that flexibility to be able to build into the platforms and tools that they’re already using. You know, like if they spend so much time and effort like creating this foundation in their tech stack, it’s not worth being that tool that doesn’t fit into the puzzle. Sure, it’s not the easiest thing, but you have to figure out a way to be able to support the clients in the way that they’re already finding success. So a third shout out to Hesom and the tech team. think they’re great at that. And I couldn’t speak more highly of our customer success team. ⁓ every single day I’m like, you guys are doing that for a client? Like, what? So much work, you know, and ⁓

Ethan Toth (28:01)

Yeah. Especially before some of the enhancements that are submitted and they’re manually doing it, trying to submit tickets and everything. It’s a thankless job sometimes, but, you know, Hampton and the rest of the team are great. So it’s been awesome to see you guys grow and also see, you know, the service and the level of support stay the same too.

Cole Cummings (28:06)

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, well, Ethan, that was great. Thank you so much for joining me today and just sharing a little bit under the hood of how YCharts is using Advizor Pro and how it’s helping you guys grow. So thanks again for your time. I think this was great, good piece of content for the both of us. And, you know, we’ll talk soon.

Ethan Toth (28:47)

Thank you so much for having me, Cole, and appreciate the time to share a little bit of our insights.

Cole Cummings (28:53)

Awesome. Thanks, man.