Howard Halpern: Okay. And should we still see even though you are beginning that transition to a longer term and higher, larger deal size, are we still going to see that traditional seasonality first half compared to second half?
Ann Hand: Yes, for sure. I mean I think that you won’t really start to see a real kind of change in the shape of that really until 2025, 2026 as far as like a real smoothing out. But I think what you guys will see is just like I said, we had six, seven figure programs last year as compared to one the year prior, that our highest deal in 2022 was about $1.2 million, $1.3 million, and we ended the year with $3.9 million in a single program. That’s why those key leading indicators in the pipeline are so essential because that’s showing the trend line of brands putting more persistent money to work, and that smooths that seasonality out. That said, Q1 is looking strong. I mean obviously, it’s not going to be as strong as Q4. But as compared to prior year same quarter, we’re happy with those results, even though Q1 is inevitably always the lowest quarter when you have a seasonality based model.
Howard Halpern: Okay. And one last one, with you saying that large deal, $3.9 million in 2023, do you have more than enough even if you don’t have a record deal, do you have more than enough substantial deals to more than cover that $4 million and grow it in the second half?
Ann Hand: Yes, I mean we are managing both salesperson performance and pipeline is a weekly task at Super League. So we’re constantly evaluating both the overall pipeline health, we’re looking at geographic splits, salesperson splits, but also is the overall pipeline adequate to more than underpin. And we’re studying things like those win-loss rates. What we try to do is run a really smart pipeline, meaning by definition, if you don’t upfront set up really clear rules about what can enter that pipeline and at what stage it advances in probability, you can get the idea that you’re going to have a massive year and kind of the emperor has no clothes. And so that’s why we have weekly pipeline meetings every Thursday, 11 a.m. Pacific Time, and we scrutinize that pipeline collectively, all of the sales and biz dev leadership.
And that also allows us to intervene when we think that why did we lose an RFP. And we do those postmortems as well, so we’re always ahead of that challenge. But I think we’ve done a pretty job the last few years as indicated by our performance of being very pragmatic in how we do that and making sure we intervene quickly and win more business.
Howard Halpern: Okay, thanks. And keep up the great work.
Ann Hand: Thank you, Howard.
Operator: Thank you. And our next question comes via telephone, and that question comes from Jack Vander Aarde with Maxim Group. Please state your question.
Jack Vander Aarde: Okay. Great. Congrats on the strong finish to the year-end. Thanks for taking my questions. On the sales team front of things, you highlighted top 2 sellers each achieved $4.5 million of sales roughly. That’s pretty impressive progress for the full-year. Do you still have eight direct sales professionals? And maybe just can you remind us how you’re thinking about plans and goals with your S&M team hiring and productivity ramp? Thanks.
Ann Hand: Yes. No, it’s a great point. So we have eight sellers. But keep in mind, we also have a couple of business development partners. So when we look at that Lunchables program, it kind of takes a couple of people. You’ve got the strategic sale. And then at the end of the day, there still has to be a seller who takes that deal over the kind of final line and also executes that program. That reorganization was important because what we realized when we pushed that reorganization in place towards the end of last year is that our salespeople were to tied up executing things. And so there’s really two factors going on with, well, why aren’t all of our sellers selling at that kind of new benchmark. One is that we had to reorganize to take a lot of execution off of their plate and really create a team that can manage the brand and the production of all the things to deliver that campaign, so that the seller can turn right back around and just get out chasing new deals.
But the other thing is, and it really leads to your good question is there’s a ramp-up time. It’s a different kind of sale. We’re not just transactionally selling a media buy on YouTube, right? It’s we’re educating brands on this new space. They come to us and say, “What is Roblox?” And we spend time first just being that real strategist to help them understand what is the landscape of these immersive platforms. And so we are coming in, in a different way, and there is a learning curve. And we do think that it takes a good seller really at least four months and up to six months to really be in a position where they can sell these very strategic kind of products, which is quite different than probably what they were historically selling in the digital media landscape.
That said, we’ve kind of made a decision that people like myself and Clayton and Matt, our President, we’re out every day selling. We’ve got again great business development leaders and people like Zach and Arianna and others. And we’ve kind of, in a good way, lost some patience for saying, “Look, we’ve got to get people at that curve faster.” And if it is a strategic sell, then we need to teach those people to be strategic sellers. When you’re being given a $3.9 million program by Kraft and Publicis, they want to hand it to somebody that builds trust, transparency. That’s a risk in some ways, to take on a smaller company. And so we’re committed to continually kind of evaluate and shake it up as required.
