Smartsheet Inc. (NYSE:SMAR) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Jackson Ader: Okay, great, thanks for taking our questions guys. The first one, just given that these things are happening concurrently, and how confident are you that none of the deal progression or close rate are impacted by some of the expense cuts that you’ve made over the last six to 12 months?

Pete Godbole: Jackson, the short answer to your question is, if we made expense reductions, we have made them in areas which are ancillary to the core selling or product areas. So we’ve made changes, for example, in support resources. We’ve made changes in expenses that we spend on reduce the dollar value of those normal procurement type of things. So we haven’t — we’ve actually maintained our sales capacity and that’s one thing we’re pretty excited about going into the year. So when you talk about deal compression or you talked about elongated site — sales cycles, that’s really about what customers are feeling and experiencing, is they’re making plans of their own or how to plan their business.

Jackson Ader: Okay, yes, that makes sense. They are outside of the scope that you would expect to see. Okay.

Pete Godbole: Thank you.

Jackson Ader: Marketing — got it. And then marketing — when we’re talking about, there is rare instances where it might be a bigger RFP and Smartsheet is already installed in a couple of business units. Are there any business units that you feel like have an outside influences on the ultimate company-wide decision, whether it’s finance or IT or sales, marketing, whatever?

Mark Mader: I would say, it both stands user population as well as those responsible for ensuring a safe and scaled environment. And I would say, there are certain things that are non-negotiables, where you have to conform, whether that’s in how it’s administered, how you are licensed, how you allow non-license people to interact with the information that is being stored. Those are all things that are, I think pretty tried and true tested in that enterprise environment. I would say that the organization from a functional standpoint, which I think are getting outsized, sort of weight on the scale right now for those who are trying to revenue and for both growth and retention. So I think the presence of field ops, any organization is directly tied to customer experience and financials, I would say, plays a larger role today.

Jackson Ader: Got it, All right. Thank you.

Mark Mader: Thanks.

Operator: Your next question is from the line of DJ Hynes with Canaccord. Your line is open.

DJ Hynes: Hi, guys, thanks for taking the questions. Mark, can you talk about what you’ve seen with some of your more marketing oriented use cases, Brandfolder outfit. It just feels like that’s a category of spend that’s seeing more scrutiny. So would be great to get any observations there.

Mark Mader: Yes I think conversations in the marketing and creative management arena, they tie out to sort of concrete financial benefits. Like, that presentation of value is landing very well. I think things are better more qualitative in nature in terms of being more confident about the work you’re managing, being a little bit more clear on the status is something, still important, but probably not enough to tip the scales. So on most of our large marketing based solution discussions now, we’re grounding it in accelerating the completion of work, the elimination of third-party resource to get that work done, and then the quantification of what that campaign or that asset is actually yielding for your company. People are very interested to learn about how to quantify that.

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