Why Customer Journey Growth Goes Beyond Closing Sales | Batuhan Ulutuncel from Alpha Generator

RICK: Pathmonk is the AI for website conversions. With increasing online competition, over 98% of website visitors don’t convert. The ability to s- successfully show your value proposition and support visitors in their buying journey separates you from the competition online. Pathmonk qualifies and converts leads on your website by figuring out where they are in the buying journey and influencing them in key decision moments with relevant micro experiences like case studies, intro videos, and much more.

Stay relevant to your visitors and increase conversions by 50% by adding Pathmonk to your website in seconds by letting the AI do all the work, and increase conversions while you keep doing marketing as usual. Check us out on pathmonk.com. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Pathmonk Presents. We… Today we’re joined by Batuhan Ulutuncel.

He’s the founder of Alpha Generator. we’re gonna talk about all, all kinds of things, Alpha Generator. we’re gonna talk about growth, marketing, and, a little bit about leadership also. but in the meantime, I wanna welcome you, Batu, to the show. Welcome s- and, I’m excited to speak to you today.

BATUHAN ULUTUNCEL: Hi, Rick. Great to be here. Thank you for, so much for the opportunity.

RICK: Of course. So maybe we jump in, we start with the basics, Batu. we, we talk about Alpha Generator, right? give us a glimpse into what, what your company is all about, what’s the heart of it, and, if you were explaining this to a friend over coffee, how would you explain what you do?

BATUHAN ULUTUNCEL: Alpha Generator is a growth agency. I started this company two years ago with writing my first initial check to the first client as a fractional growth officer and founder support as a service. In this journey, we evolved. Today, I’m calling my clients my portfolio companies because it also represents and suits better to my commitment and my alignment and making our outcomes are 100% aligned.

There is only one North Star in this company, only one metric I truly care, increasing my portfolio company’s shareholder value. My companies range from large enterprises to SMEs and startups, and I’m building systems which are bringing additional revenues, additional capital, and scalable expansion to my clients.

Currently, my differentiating point, this company’s differentiating point, is the combination of having responsibility, having ownership of the work and, committing to the results. The operating model varies. Sometimes we are picking as a service operating model, sometimes we go with as a result, but this is how I’m seeing where Alpha Generator came today.

RICK: Okay. Thanks for that intro, and I really appreciate that perspective, calling them your portfolio companies. it’s different, right? ‘Cause it’s, it’s not as common. but it is, it just shows your mentality and your mindset when you go to work with these companies ’cause you…

as you said, you wanna increase their shareholder, value, right? And I’m curious, if, say, I’m… maybe I’m not even looking for a growth agency, I, but I know I do need to grow, right? what ways do I have to discover you as an agency, Alpha Generator? And, in other words, what are the marketing channels that are working great for you guys at the moment to bring in more business?

BATUHAN ULUTUNCEL: Most of my clients are coming from my direct background, which is also linked why I’m calling them portfolio companies. I’m coming from venture capital background, and I worked and, lived in different parts of the world, Italy, India, Turkey, sometimes focused on, Israel or US market, depending on the, vehicle we were running by that time as investment managers.

So I was lucky enough to have this amazing network of people that I’m collaborating with today, so they are giving me lots of the opportunities, but I’m also doing lots of inbound and outbound, but not necessarily for my direct sales. Because when I outbound, I see something very relatable, I see something exciting, something fascinating.

I want to meet that person. I want to learn that person’s story. I would like to understand their perspective and how these outcomes are happening. So organically, they are becoming a part of my network, and also the inbound is working mainly over my webpage, and also the, my social media posts, sharings, mainly LinkedIn and a couple of other channels.

RICK: Okay, that’s awesome. Now, in all of this, where does your website sit, as far as, getting people to it? And, how does it work when it comes to converting? And I guess my question is there anything about the website at the moment that you feel works great when it comes to converting, new potential clients or anything that you’ve got your eye on improving rather?

BATUHAN ULUTUNCEL: Sure, sure. Great question. Actually, I believe not every company use their website in the same way because currently for my business, my retention, my branding is much more important than additional sales because my company is already operating, growth agencies, any agency, they are not the most scalable organizations.

So we are not exponential organizations. We have to accept that. So the way I’m structuring my website is clarity.

I want no matter who, anybody who is entering to my website to be able to understand what Alpha Generator can bring to them next Monday starting from 8:00 AM until noon, what will be the value add to their current problems that Alpha Generator can bring a solution

RICK: Okay.

That’s very interesting. Now, with the, with the portfolio of, clients that you have- Yeah,

BATUHAN ULUTUNCEL: you can also

RICK: call them

BATUHAN ULUTUNCEL: clients …

RICK: portfolio companies or clients, what have you seen working so far when it comes to, dealing with growth? I’m sure you’ve had, as an agency, you’re looking at websites, you’re looking at different facets of the business when it comes to growth.

But, I guess my question is here really is about understanding what have you seen working so far when it comes to conversion, on websites? And maybe there are some tools that you like, that you’ve seen working well, maybe tactics, frameworks even to operate off, of that are just working, and the reason I’m asking this, obviously, Pathmonk being a, a sales tool for websites, our listenership loves, eats for breakfast, this kind of information. So do you have anything to share with us on that front?

BATUHAN ULUTUNCEL: I believe it became also very available with the development of AI.

We got a, we got opportunity to collect more data, interpret more data, so understand better. When it comes to, generating that traffic and capturing that as a revenue with conversion, I believe one of the very meaningful point is a couple of years ago, we were destined, we were forced, we didn’t have any option but looking at things with a sales point of view.

And approximately last year, maybe one year and a half, I stopped that with my portfolio companies. I’m not looking at sales anymore. This may sound wrong if I just stop here explaining, but I’m taking a longer view on our clients. I’m starting from their first engagement with the brand, entire sales cycle, and their lifetime where we are upselling, cross-selling, and keeping retention.

And after churn, how we’re managing that, how we are trying to, regain the customer. We are also working with product, not only website, to collect lots of insights. So instead of, having a client understanding different segments, different structures, different groups of clients and what is their ask, what is their need, we are trying to understand at what step of their responding life stage according to their segmentation, according to their vertical, according to their industry, according to other different, other metrics which are meaningful for them.

And I don’t want to classify these metrics. The reason behind that is I don’t think there are pre-built playbooks which you can download, install to your company- and they are guaranteed to work.

I believe you have to understand as a company who is your target audience that you can make money out of that. And after that, you have to set your growth market into motion. How you are reaching, telling the story to these clients, how they are, how you are capturing that. And in this journey, you start to realize there are also additional stakeholders, which can be like your vendors, your partners, your franchises, your different channels.

And, you have to make sure that every one of them, when they enter to your website or when they are directed to your… a portion of your portal on your website or any other area, they are consuming that in a very easy way. They are not having problem understanding that. I resemble this thing like a D- DNA string.

First you have to find the, right need, then right solution, then right way putting in the product. And then, understanding, right understanding of the client on what platform they want to engage with this, what is the right message to deliver them in order to, make a good sales cycle, high-performing sales cycle when I say good sales cycle.

Closing the deal, keeping them as a custom- customer. And I use like good, great, It is like a perfect DNA string. Then you have to duplicate this thing for different verticals, industries, customer groups. And I’m trying to avoid using the name of the segmentation on purpose because I also have a radical view.

I don’t know if it will become real or not. I’m also, expecting segment-based approaches also to, lose their, value, lose their flavor in time. Because the thing people invented segmented segments, it is coming from you cannot serve everybody in a one fit, one-size-fits-all. But you cannot go, unlimited tailoring at the person, individual personalization.

You weren’t able to do that a couple of years ago. But today with AI, if your unit economics is meaningful, and if your, strategic decisions also backing that, you can do that. So I believe there is also losing some interest. So I truly believe on the website we will continue seeing, we are familiar with A/B testing with lots of routing, but we will be seeing lots of individual level optimization.

And, Rick Mosaik, we are also familiar nowadays we start to see some very, very radical applications, which is also trying to capture the expectation of the user and try to build UI, UX from zero on the fly according to their interest, according to their ask

RICK: Yeah, which is crazy, right? But Ola, I, I like, your answer ’cause it’s

It just went in a little bit more in-depth, than usual, right? And, I appreciate that ’cause it, it just looks at the, bird’s-eye view, right? As opposed to going, into a specific granular, let’s say, fashion, for answering it. You just looked at it in the whole funnel, if you will. And just like for each thing, there’s a component, there’s a segment that you need to pay att- attention to.

Just ending with, with the, use of tools even that, that are just, blowing people out of the water just, the way that it’s progressing, which is great. so I appreciate that. I also wanna switch gears for a second here, Batu, and then maybe talk about you as a leader.

you mentioned you have a background, a different background than, what you’re doing at the moment, working at VC, companies and, whatnot. So give us a glimpse into, into your day, if you will, and, what’s a day in the life like for you at the moment running, Alpha Generator and, what are the main fo- things that you focus on a day-to-day?

BATUHAN ULUTUNCEL: Okay. Okay. thank you very much for the great question. I believe, with my existing clients after some point, the … Maybe this may sound also unprofessional, but my title, my company, I’m the founder of Alpha Generator, and they are receiving services or products or some, benefits from my company.

But when I’m supporting them, and one of my main support lines is like founder s- founder bandwidth support and- supporting them in their journey, and that limit is eroding almost day by day. One of my clients mocked me a couple of days ago. I’m almost becoming like a co-founder in the company via left.

But this is the exact culture I want to have with them because I don’t want to work with companies that I wouldn’t be joining as a employee-

or I wouldn’t be putting my money as an investor or as an investment manager. So in my previous life, in my previous career as a venture capitalist, I had s- pretty hard times.

I remember days, coming at the office around 7:00 AM, leaving 11:00 PM. I was reading lots of things. I was almost spending like every, every day, three hours reading lots of things, and I was, reading newsletter. I was trying to understand what’s happening, why. This is how I spent my 30s. And going little bit further back in time, my mid-20s, I remember I had a notebook which I was writing with a pen.

Whenever I see a deal, I was taking note. This company received investment or acquired by this company at this valuation, and this is the justification of the valuation. This is the reasoning. These are the synergies. So not only what they did, also why they did it, and these are sounds fantastic when I’m telling stories, but trust me, when you are living from the first-hand, they are not the most fantastic things.

My entire body is covered with battle scars, getting beaten in different markets, in different geographies, with different verticals, with different founders because everybody, every founder has different resources, different challenges, so you have to adapt to that. So my currently A day’s life is going with all experiencing and tolerating all these ups and downs my portfolio companies are experiencing.

And I want to share one example, one very, straightforward example from my, last week. I’m currently having, two of my portfolio companies. One is located in Turkey, Ankara, and the other one is located in Texas, Austin. And, with Texas, Austin, we are making somehow very manageable timing for en- entire meetings and other things, and it is almost going like they are my next door neighbors.

And with, Ankara, which is located in Turkey, and I’m also living in Turkey, we made a 3:30 AM meeting, of an hour because it was necessary. It was urgent. We didn’t want topic to wait, and you generally don’t have 3:30 AM meetings with other people who are living in the same country. But if this is what it is taking…

I’m not saying this is my regular life, this is my regular. But just give you a glimpse of the DNA I’m trying to preserve here, and I’m trying to, I’m d- doing my best to fulfill that.

RICK: Okay. No, I appreciate that. I agree. It’s not usual to have that 3:30 AM meeting, but it gives us an idea of, the level of care that you have for, what you do, for sure.

And, in a way, it’s not the craziest thing, but at the same time, the extent to which you’re willing to go to for, getting something done, which I think speaks more of, about, the, the, level of, founder that, you might be and, maybe even from your background that you brought some of that, in this to you have that drive to go get things and, and be able to, get them done.

Now, this is my understanding of it, right? Maybe I’m wrong, but, at least that’s what I got from your little story and your sharing this.

BATUHAN ULUTUNCEL: I never heard or never seen anybody who is working 9:00 to 5:00 and achieving something exciting even for themselves. Something interesting.

So yeah, it’s, it is for the day fulfills my batteries. Let me put it in this way.

RICK: Fair enough. Fair enough. Fair enough. Now, we’re in the back end of our episode together here, Batu. we have a rapid fire segment that I love to go into with you before we wrap things up. The only question is, are you ready for

BATUHAN ULUTUNCEL: it?

Sure.

RICK: All right, let’s do it. So when it comes to consuming content, do you prefer watching, listening, or reading?

BATUHAN ULUTUNCEL: I prefer reading.

RICK: Okay. So what’s the latest piece of content you read? It could be a book, an article, a research paper even, right? And, was there anything that stuck with you in it?

BATUHAN ULUTUNCEL: I’m in the middle of reading Never Split the Difference.

I don’t know if you are familiar d- with that book. It is about negotiation and- Chris

RICK: Voss, right?

BATUHAN ULUTUNCEL: Yes, exactly. And I believe that can be the greatest book everybody has to read.

RICK: But,

BATUHAN ULUTUNCEL: e- even this can be a muscle I’m getting from that book because it’s all about negotiation and convincing people.

So I’m feeling, obliged to convince other people it is the greatest book. But yeah, you see my point. It,

RICK: it- Yeah, I love it.

BATUHAN ULUTUNCEL: Yeah. Quite intellectually very … it is igniting my intellectual curiosity. The more I read, more I try to implement to my life, more I try to test it. Sometimes I’m thinking, “Am I over-engineering?”

am I deliberately trying to include my learnings in my daily life? But it is also fun, and this is the most important thing.

RICK: Exactly. Yeah, I agree. It’s a great book and, I’m sure many people have it and read it at least. I also agree that, it’s, some of the… Whatever you do, work, nine to five, as you just mentioned, or, entrepreneurship, or anything really.

even just speaking to, your wife or your children or, friends, there’s always a point of negotiation. If, if you, rely on some of those tactics, I think you might, might be surprised on what you can achieve. But, with that aside, about to… If you had a magic wand, and you could fix one frustrating thing in your life with tech, what would you pick?

What would you fix?

BATUHAN ULUTUNCEL: It is not fixing, but getting something new. I would like- to have the superpower of talking everybody simultaneously.

RICK: Okay. Like telepathy, or?

BATUHAN ULUTUNCEL: I don’t care. it is technology. They can bring them in. I don’t care. It is almost like instead of, try to prioritize or try things, just the ability.

You can always, create your own roadmap to reach out to people. But just having that access, having that, speed of doing things because, in especially what we are doing, the speed of response is very important, and we are living in a very, very noisy world. It is becoming very tough even for marketers to distinguish, to get distinguished, d- to get distingu- to get your signal distinguished from the noise in the market.

So with this superpower, I think e- everybody w- everybody would be like

Holy cow, what is happening? who is this voice? So it will be, drawing, attention. So maybe for me, maybe for the portfolio companies, that would be great.

RICK: Okay. Yeah, I like that. I like that. There’s someone out there, I’m sorry, I’m sure it’s working on this kind of concept, for sure. and if not, there’s a great opportunity there to explore it, right?

but Tu, I, I want to thank you a lot for being on the show with us today. As we wrap things up, I also want to give you the last word, and, the question here is, assuming someone forgets everything about the interview today, what is the one thing that they should remember about Alpha Generator and the work you guys are doing?

BATUHAN ULUTUNCEL: Ah. We are trying to understand our clients’ why they are doing that. Not because of things are done in that way, not because of the things should be done in that way, but where do you want to– where they want to go and how they can, make their j- journey at its maximum capacity. And we want to stick with our portfolio companies on the long run.

And as I told you, in last two years, my company evolved a lot and how I am serving what I’m serving, am I putting products, it is also changing, and I am grateful to partners who named me as their partners, both Anthropic and OpenAI, which played huge roles in my– this shift in my com- company. So basically, we will be open to explore our, potential synergies that we can create to- together.

So yeah, this would be the thing I would like to, leave our listeners together with.

RICK: Of course. And if someone is intrigued, they want to check you guys out and understand more about what you do exactly, where can we send them? Where can they go?

BATUHAN ULUTUNCEL: Coming up. Sorry

RICK: If people are interested in this, in understanding more about Alpha Generator, where can, we send them? do you have a website maybe we want to send them to or a social media account that,

BATUHAN ULUTUNCEL: Sure. they can directly go to alphagenerator.net, our website, or they can try to reach me on LinkedIn.

I’m, quite open also connecting at individual level and picking up from there. Whatever the client is feeling, portfolio companies, potential portfolio companies feeling it’s a better match for their culture and communes.

RICK: Perfect. So I, recommend wholeheartedly that people go and check you guys out and connect with you, Batuhan.

It’s been a, a pleasure to speak to you today, and, and also conver-conversation with insights. And, maybe we get to do this again soon and, by the next time we do it, the company has grow- has grown ten X even more, So I’m really hoping that for you guys. I’m hoping you f- I’m hoping this for your portfolio companies.

But in the meantime, Batu, I, I want to wish you a wonderful day and, hope to, get this to, to do, it again soon.

BATUHAN ULUTUNCEL: Great. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Maybe we should also, think about I’m already mentioning a couple of clients to, how to position PetMonk, but we, can also always talk about, alternative ways because I truly believe what you are building, what you have already built, which is available today on PetMonk, is a very great opportunity to people– for people to ask themselves, “Am I– how can I prove myself, am I– if I’m doing the right thing?”

I think this was a question of Ray Dalio building entire, investment firm- And so it, maybe one of his principles. So one of my suggestions to leave listeners with would be like, take a leap of faith. Try things because we are in the area of speed with lots of AI, with lots of automization. And, it is grateful to, being here together with Rick from PetMonk because I absolutely also love what they’re building.

RICK: Thank you so much, sir. I appreciate it and, thank you for, the kind words.

BATUHAN ULUTUNCEL: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

RICK: All right. Bye everyone.