So… Right away from Day 1 for our partners, we directly “plug-in” the front-end & back-end machine where we “instantly” help you cut through the noise of competitions & dominate your niche market by having:
🦄 Holistic Foundation (For You & Your Company) for Long-Term Domination (Build A Legacy, An Impact, Not A Hit & Run Business), like MVP, Back-to-Back Results, Proof-of-Concepts, Case Studies, Product-Market Fit, Copywriting-Creatives Resonance, Plugin Your Own Unique Basic Infinite Ecosystem Growth Flywheel Machine (Front-End & Back-End), Basic All-in-One Platform (Ecosystem of Everything), Gain Infinite Feedback-Loophole in Everything,
🦄 Evergreen Models that Set You Apart from The Failed Companies (90% of Business Fails!),
🦄 Being Extremely Profitable Since Day 1 to Keep Compounding Toward Niche Domination,
🦄 Activate “Infinity in Everything” “Momentum”, Ripple-Effect, Compound-Effect, Viral-Effect, & Many More Leverage
🦄 You Will Have All of Your Upsides Ridiculously High that They Themselves Outbid Your Competitions (e.g. High Profit Margin, Quick Sales Velocity (Sales Cycle), High ARPU, High LTV, Jam-Packed Traffics, Leads, Bookings, Demos, Closing Rate, Mouth-to-Mouth, Retention, Ascension, Expansion, etc) & Low Downsides (0% Churn Rate, 0% Turnover, 0% Refund, 0% Chargeback, Low CAC, Less Stress with More Clarity, Certainty, & Predictability, Etc)
🦄 You Will Shift from a “Chief Everything Officer” to a Real CEO (Chief Executive Officer) as We’ll Help You to Own The “Holy-Grail” Model that Will Help You to Quantum-Growth-Hack While Maintaining a Lean Operational, Profitably, Scalably, & Literally Unstoppable!
🦄 Rapid Scale (Most People Scale A “Broken Machine” Until They Realize They Haven’t Even Validated The Holistic Foundation Properly to Earn “The Right of Scaling-Up”)
🦄 Build O-Teams, Partners, Technology Stacks (Human + Technology) to Eliminate Bottlenecks, Automate & Delegate Operational Process A-Z, & 🦄 Ultimately Optimize Your Company & Yourself to be Better, Best, & Unstoppable As Time Goes By (Infinite Scalability)
🦄 Infinite Ecosystem Growth Flywheel Machine (Front-End & Back-End) & All-In-One Platform (Ecosystem of Everything) for Talents (Build O-Teams, Not A, B, Or Other Lower Level)
🦄 Raise Capital Like Seed & Series Fund (Not Recommended But If The Opportunity Cost is Justified (e.g. Not Only Cash, But Also Access to Exclusive Networks, Partnership, & Other Unlimited Opportunities), then let’s do it!)Investors Will Beg to Invest in Your Company as We Help You Scale Rapidly + Own A Holistic Business Fundamental Value + We Have Access to 9,000+ Investors (From Individuals to Entities), Ready to Help You If You Deserve!
To Sum Everything Up Into A Clear Process, Here You Go!
🏆 Customer-Focus #1 - Focus On 1 Sub-Niche (Specialist) (Expert) (Top-of-Mind) (Only Solution)
🏆 Precisely Detailed ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) & Product Features (Focus in Problem-Solving)
Right Now, we assume you have validated the product-market fit and you also have your product or service up & running for a while and you are willing to scale-up rapidly before any of your competitors do, so let's continue:
🏆 Leverage Case Studies (Results Vault) (Successful Outcomes Speak Themselves, Nothing Else!)
🏆 Leverage Video Sales Letter (VSL) & Long Sales Letter (SL) as a Direct-Response & Branding
🏆 Leverage Organic Inbound (Human (Manual) + Technology (Eliminate, Automate, & Optimize)
🏆 Leverage Organic Outbound (Human (Manual) + Technology (Eliminate, Automate, & Optimize)
🏆 Leverage Sales Process A-Z (From Engagement & Appointment (Discos & Demos) to Closing)
🏆 Validate Unit-Case Economics (Profitable, Scalable, & Rapid Growth in Short-Term & Long-Term)
🏆 Leverage Infinite Upsides & Negative Downsides (Evergreen Lifetime Value from Loyal Allies)
🏆 Leverage Hybrid Model (Combination of DIY + DWY + DFY) for Unlimited Scalability (ASAP)
🏆 Leverage Joint Venture (JV) Partnership & Collaboration (Referral) (Insider Allies)
🏆 Leverage Paid Inbound & Outbound (Omnipresence through Omnichannel) (Domain Authority)
🏆 Scale Sales Team (Get to Decision-Makers Directly) (From Small, Medium, to Large Enterprises)
LET'S START🚀
🎯Customer-Focus #1 - Focus On 1 Sub-Niche (Specialist) (Expert) (Top-of-Mind) (Only Solution)
0 Competition, The Only Solution, High Upsides (Conversion %, Open %, Click %, ROI, Etc.), Low to 0 Downsides (Effort, Time, $0 Cost, Etc.), They Come to You Instead of You Chasing Them (Command High Price, Pick & Choose Them (ICP Only) as They are Begging You for Help), Monopoly in Small & Unique Market with Founders who have a weirdly specific domain expertise then leverage everything to exhaust the market to then expand into adjacent niche without any effort (utilize results, achievements, awards, exposure, network of partners, proven-to-resonate foundational sales letter, ad angles (variation), cash flow, insider connection, exclusive privilege (benefits), o-teams ecosystem, & other resources).
Call out your ICP & speak about their pains & desires in vivid detail that makes them feel like we tore a page out of their personal diary. Once we get their attention, solve their problem and offer them additional help. Buzzsumo.com & other related tools to identify the top 10 blogs (topics) in this niche then go to the comment section to identify what people are discussing. Who are the top 10 influencers in this niche? Top 10 books in this niche? Top 10 events? Communities? Lingos? You can also interview them (reporting).
The reason why we pick a niche is because it’s extremely expensive to market to a broad group of people with a general message. If your niche is laser-focused, the cost to generate a lead will be low, the cost to close will be low, and the whole machine in the long-term will function extremely well.
We focus on 1 customer segment and 1 problem. When we do this, we can isolate extremely compelling sales arguments.
Start local, lowest hanging fruit, startup with great product and operational, etc. where competition is 0 (you need cash & results for infinite upsides-negative downsides asap). Work closely (in-person), squeeze every information into your assets later on.
Markets are dynamic (there’re always new offers and businesses being made. New problems to solve. Extremely noisy.), you can expand into adjacent niche when you hit your diminishing margin of return. Ex: Palantir starts with government agencies, FB starts with Harvard students, Tesla starts with wealthy people and celebrities, Tutoring start with private school tutoring, Detailing start on the lakeshore serving wealthy people with vans
Zero Competition (Pioneer) - Large competitors struggle with focus and have blind spots. Going after a blind spot ensures a zero-competition environment. A competitor will watch what you are doing, then opt to compete with you or buy you if you are successful.
Better (Best) Solutions - With focus, you can make your solution the best or only option for the niche. Engineering bandwidth targeted at one problem will beat engineering bandwidth targeted at multiple problems.
Highest Resonance (Domain Expertise) - You will be able to create laser-targeted messaging and achieve high ROI with your marketing. Higher click through rates, higher lead conversion rates, lower CPD, CPL, CPM etc.. Poor focus in marketing drops efficiency.
Lethal Sales & Conversion Mechanisms - Salespeople and automated funnels function best when they are targeting 1 person and delivering 1 offer. Salespeople get really good and conversion rates shoot up when they are selling 1 thing. Automated funnels work best when they are selling only 1 thing. Less = More
Moat Building/Monopolies - Competitors won't try to touch you if they know you are completely focus on 1 thing. They will have to be more obsessed than you.
Go high-ticket (building stuff for broke people is the same amount of work as building stuff for people with means) (Low-end customers are needy, demanding, low-ball, etc.)
Most founders mess this niche-picking part. They get too excited by the possibility of building a billion dollar business and selling to everyone… They stare at the summit, NOT THEIR BOOTS. They dilute their resources, get overwhelmed and end up solving nothing for no-one. The key is to solve a painful problem for the ONE-SPECIFIC person. Everyone somehow forgets that in order to get to 1000 customers, you need to first get to 5. Then 10. Then 100. Get laser focused on your niche and the exact problem you are solving.
One of the points made by Peter Thiel in his book, “Zero To One”, was that profits are a function of X, Y - where X is the value created in the market and Y is the % of X captured - in other words, the business or entrepreneur creates X amount of value and captures Y% of it where X and Y are independent variables. Building upon Thiel’s insight, we can propose that X (the value created) is a function of the transformation provided to the niche and Y is a function of the mechanism efficiency and the competitors in the market.
Profits = AX * BY - where X is the value created (transformation value) and Y is the % captured of X
Where A and B are constants defined by the particular market.
Y = (1-C) -where is the mechanism efficiency (%) and C is the market share owned by the competitors (%)
We can rewrite this expression:
Profits = AX * B(1-C)
By exploring the limits of Profits, we can determine that Profit is maximized by being a monopoly in the market - the best or only option - when relative market share owned by a competitor approaches 0 (C0) - this seems to be exactly what Theil suggests in his book.
We can also determine that Profit reaches a maximum when mechanism efficiency approaches 1 or 100% (1) - meaning maximum profits are realized if you can capture 100% of the value created.
We can also see that when X∞ (the value created approaches infinity), Profit approaches infinity.
Thiel uses this lens to explain why Google’s market cap value is greater than the sum of all Airline market cap values.
The value of the search engine is extremely high (X is high), the efficiency of the search engine is extremely high (is high since Google uses a network to deliver the value), and there are almost no competitors in the market (Cis low - the competitors make up less than 20% of the market), therefore Google collects monopoly profits and the Market cap is over $800B.
This lens is also used to explain why almost all airlines don’t make any money over the long term - the value is extremely high (X is high - as determined by revenue collected by customers), the mechanism efficiency is low (is low) and there are many competitors (Cis high) in the market.
When you are creating your solution, you want to become the best or only solution in the market. The time and energy necessary to build the best and only option for a specific group of people or small segment is achievable by a startup if the niche is small and the competitive landscape is bare.
A startup cannot afford to validate a mechanism that is the best and only solution for multiple niches simultaneously. Getting to your first 1000 customers requires that you get to your first 10 customers, then 100, then 500, etc.. It’s much easier to get your first 10 if you are focused on one niche with 0 competition than it is focusing on multiple niches simultaneously.
Competitors understand that if they are going to compete with you, they want a chance of winning. The likelihood of them winning is low if they are competing with someone who’s sole focus is delivering the transformation to a specific niche. They will jump in to compete with you if you validate a business model profitable enough to warrant abandoning their current niche, however, at that point, you will have a lead. When you offer better performance for a specific niche (X value is higher), you can charge a higher price than a competitor who offers lower performance.
By only focusing on 1 person and 1 transformation, engineering efforts are more likely to create niche-specific mechanisms that deliver the transformation better than competitors - higher performance, and better value. Ways to improve efficiency of the mechanism are found, which create higher contribution and higher margins. So, a better mechanism begets better products, solutions, case studies, profits, etc.
The resonance of the marketing is a function of your transformation/claim, evidence that the claim is true (case studies), and specific. With the best niche-specific case studies, your marketing message will achieve higher resonance than competitor messages with inferior case studies. This will lower CPL (cost per lead), CAC (cost to acquire a customer) and increase ROI (return on investment) on marketing.
Learnings from previous sales are recycled and used to refine the current sales process. Sales reps’ conversion rates increase when they are only selling to 1 niche - they can converge to over 100%. Your marketing funnel effectiveness is improved over time as you are using the bofu data to improve the mofu content and tofu strategy. All aspects of the funnel “tighten up” and the unit economics improve over time.
When you are focused on a specific vertical, problem, age group, role, etc.. targeting becomes accurate. You can mine data/scrape data from social platforms and you can use the targeting features inside the ad products to create extremely specific audiences. You can also use a strategy called “linking” or “mushrooming”. This is where you use the current momentum from the names and logos you are collecting to attract others who recognize the names and logos. This creates a chain reaction and “mushroom effect” that improves conversion rate. Market-message resonance depends on audience quality. When you “niche down”, you have a higher likelihood of finding an audience that will respond to a specific message than if you didn't “niche down”.
Multiple experiments in quick succession are needed to determine a combination that creates the highest yield. More data is needed to validate a larger audience than is needed to validate a smaller audience. This can result in false negatives and longer-than-necessary experiment timelines.
Commit to 1 niche at a time requires discipline. Founders often find it difficult to be laser-focused on 1 niche. It is common for founders to change their niche before they conclude their experiment. This can result in a false negative. False positives can occur by running 1 experiment, once. However, the scientific method requires that the experiment results be duplicated in independent environments back-to-back.
You expand your niche when you exhaust your current niche and you hit a point of diminishing returns with your marketing spending, ie., the rate of new customers entering the market is equal to the rate of new customers being absorbed by the business’ steady state. At this point, the incremental increase in marketing and sales spending has little to no effect on the sales of the particular offer. When this happens, don’t jump to a totally different niche, you stay as close as possible to your original niche and change your angle of attack by 10 degrees to open up a new green field. This will allow you to recycle learnings and development work and leverage your previous track record in the new niche. Example: Facebook started at Harvard and achieved 65% market share in 10 days, then they jumped to other Ivy league schools. Only after they completely dominated the market and experienced saturation, did they expand into other markets. Their expansion was always in an adjacent field.
The resources (time, energy, money, etc.) needed to validate (master) 1 niche are extensive. Even if you have multiple niches that you can validate, picking the 1 with the highest future probability value is in your best interest to pursue ASAP as an expert with a laser-focused investment of resources (time, energy, money, etc.). For example, Sam has a CRM tool that she sells to hedge funds and IT service companies. Sam goes through this training and determines that the CRM for hedge funds yields a higher profitable unit case. So she drops the IT service companies and laser-focuses on the hedge funds. Once she exhausts the hedge fund market, she can expand into adjacent niches.
A great niche includes a unique insight or a secret as an advantage. Peter Thiel often poses the questions to entrepreneurs validating their business (what do you know to be true that everyone else thinks is wrong?). What he is really asking is (what understanding of the market do you have? (current state, desired state, problem stacking) that others don’t have yet? What secrets do you have?). For example: with Airbnb, the secret insight was that average people would stay with strangers to save some money, and strangers would allow average people to stay with them for extra income (reducing expenses).
🚀Is the niche permanent? - No, you are likely going to iterate your holistic foundation multiple times as you collect more data and reference points. If you are starting from scratch your spreadsheet will be a list of assumptions. Infinite Feedback-Loophole.
🚀What makes a great niche? - The person is clearly defined & you have deep domain expertise with respect to their problems & desires. The person also recognizes the problem, has cobbled together an interim solution & has a budget to solve the problem.
🚀Can you target multiple niches in parallel? - You can but you need to solve the unit case one at a time. This is a more effective use of resources.
🚀Who should be involved in this initial process? - Founders, execs, folks who are closest to the business. You can't outsource this to someone without deep domain expertise.
🚀Where is this information used? - Used to direct product, marketing, sales, investors - in VSLS, advertisements, sales decks, investment decks... You name it.
🚀How specific do you need to be? You can dial in the segment by role or layer both.
🚀Why does the person need to have money? It's not 100x harder to build and sell something for $10k than it is for something that is $100. Your business could break if the person you are selling it to can't afford the price. It's always better to start as high up stream as you can because there is margin there and you won't need any funding if you can pre-sell.
🚀Should the distribution channel determine my niche? Yes, if you have a distribution to a market, it's best to start there.
🚀Why is specificity so important? The market will respond to an ultra-specific message. Higher resonance means lower CPL, lower CAC, and higher probability of problem-solution fit.
🚀What if we have multiple niches? If you have multiple niches, we will do an audit on the profitability of each niche, then determine the path of least resistance to the highest rate of capital accumulation. We map out the gross contribution values of each customer, then compare these values to the sales cycle length to determine the path of least resistance.
🚀What if I don’t have a product or case studies yet? If you don’t have a product or case studies, we will be considering the answers in this template. We will need to validate them with customer interviews and discovery/sales calls. We don’t want you to invest into building the product until you can clearly prove demand for your solution.
🚀Who should be filling this out? The founders, CEOs, core team members should be filling this out. This part sets the direction of the entire funnel and if it’s off, it could mean that all cascading activities will be off as well. Charging junior folks with mapping the foundational copy and the direction could result in misalignment from the get go and founders will be forced to revisit this step a few months later. For this reason, we recommend that whoever has the most domain expertise influences the foundational copy.
🎯Precisely Detailed ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) & Product Features (Focus in Problem-Solving)
Specific Niche Title:
Location (Where is this customer located? The more narrow, the easier they will be to target. The more broad, the more expensive it will be to target):
Getting Significant data sets when you are testing for time to market and cost to market (To be most efficient in the marketing campaigns, you need to first start with an extremely small audience, solve for the messaging, then expand into adjacent pools of people that may be more dilute than your original pool. This is the most efficient way to test. Here's why: to test a message or claim to a set of people, you need to test a significant portion of the set to get statistically significant data. For example, if your audience is too broad and is made up of 10M people, to test 10% of that audience to get statistically significant data, you will need to get your message in front of 1M people, which could be very expensive on social platforms considering you are paying per impression):
Vertical (The vertical or industry defines the domain in which the customer or prospects operate. The activities of someone in for example the Construction industry are slightly different than those in the Insurance industry-perhaps they have similar problems, however, the order of those problems could be different. When you are marketing, you want to address a high-priority problem and if you address too many verticals at one time, you could decrease the efficiency of the message and campaign since your message may speak to none of the highest priority problems for any of the involved segments. For this reason, we want to keep our audience vertical specific and our whole argument vertical specific Later, when your marketing becomes more robust and you can exploit an existing audience and brand, can you expand using more broad messaging, however, when you are starting, and when profit and efficiency means life or death, you want to keep it extremely narrow):
Role (If you are selling b2b, the role within the company you are selling is important to define. If there are multiple decision-makers in the buying process, then you can define multiple roles in a separate column. The problems and the priority of those problems vary within the roles, so it's important to be specific here):
Gender (Gender is important to define since social platforms allow you to target by gender. Furthermore, the way you write a copy to a male is slightly different from how you write a copy to a female):
Experience Level (When targeting on platforms like Linkedin, you have the option to target based on experience level. Do some digging on your customer's profile and determine the average experience level in years):
People/Friends in Niche That You Know (You want to understand your prospect or customer like you would your friends. If you are actually friends with your customer, then great. Put them down here. On the other hand, let's assume your audience is extremely small (only 100k people). To get statistically significant data, you will only need to get in front of 10k people, which is much cheaper than getting in front of 1M people. For this reason, we want to keep our audiences extremely narrow when we are starting, so there is no room for a false negative simply because we didn't test with enough data. In general, only have a few locations/cities in your initial audience and keep the audience to 10k-20k):
How They Would Describe Themselves (Everyone has an identity. Perhaps your customer thinks of himself as a lion taking on the world in the executive position. Perhaps they think of themselves as a hamster running around on a wheel. Who knows! You want to really understand the ego and how the customer identifies so you can speak to them in the copy. If you match your copy to how they identify themselves, you will cut through all noise and you will focus them in like a divine force):
Company Size (The size of the company is important since it can be targeted on the Linkedin platform. Take the average employees of each customer and define them here):
Education Level (Since you can target on Linkedin and Facebook based on Education level, you want to map that in your spreadsheet as well. Go on Linkedin and snoop a bit):
Educational Institution (When prospecting, you want to look for common denominators between customers and prospects. One great one is the school they went to. People feel obligated to engage with alumni or acquaintances of alumni, so make a note of institutions and groups in which they participate):
Current Activities (These include what the prospect does on a daily basis, what they do on a weekly basis, and what they do on a yearly basis. We also want to map out the cost of those activities and the yield that those activities achieve. If they are responsible for KPIs, we want to map those out and how they are hitting them):
Technologies Exploitable (Behind every solution, there is an underlying technology that is exploited to cause efficiency gain relative to the prospect. The application of the technology is the activity that creates value. When the current activities are known, the technologies exploitable are known, and methods on how to exploit the technologies are known, then one can solve the problem. These technologies could be a method, a system, a material, a new hardware type, etc. There are always new technologies being invented and there are always new ways to apply them to create efficiency and value):
Problem (These are lacking the benefits due to the misapplication of technologies. When you understand the technologies and activities, then you can list the problems and their magnitude in terms of dollars. For example: A customer not using sales automation could be costing them in their current state, 5 sales per month, which would equate to $10,000 per month or $120k per year. Since that is a benefit they are missing out on the problem that is created by having them be aware that the potential benefit hurts by $120k per year! If that pain is more than their current pain, then it will jump to the most urgent spot, and they will take action to solve it (They have no choice). Write the problems in the spreadsheet and assign magnitudes to those problems) (This is what they need asap (band aid), not they want in the future (long-term)):
Emotional Argument (People operate on both the rational and emotional plane. Only communicating on one plane is not enough to write effective copy and do effective marketing and sales. People are people. They have dreams, desires, fears, suspicions, enemies we can speak to those emotional triggers, we will fall into deep rapport. There is more than one way to communicate on the emotional level. In advertising, and in production, we can use imagery to communicate that we understand them. In sales, we can use tonality and pacing to communicate. In the product, we can use features and colors of buttons to communicate and we understand them):
Dreams and Desires (When copywriting, you want to always speak to deep down dreams and desires of the prospect. If you can hit the jugular", you will cut through the noise and get extreme resonance, making the copy convert. Most people are unwilling to admit their secret, deeper dreams and desires for fear of social consequences. Sometimes, however, they will sip out when the prospect is agitated or in a weak or red state (freudian sip). For example, I recall a customer telling me at one point "Dam- Nick I just want to get to $1M AR and I don't care how we do it. That was the deepest desire for him. When I aligned to that, we were synched. You need to spend time with the prospects either on sales calls or on interviews with them or by actually working with them to determine these deep desires. the founder or CEO was or still is archetype, then you and him/her can sit down and really map out their deepest dreams & desires):
Fears (Everyone is scared of something. If you can allay fears, you will develop deep rapport with the prospect. The deep down fears could be something like: Wife running off with another guy because the business fails (probably most traumatic for a guy). For a woman: the husband running off with a younger woman. You could mix those into your copy in jest if you want to hit nerves and make the argument more potent):
Suspicions (If you can confirm suspicions, you will fall into deep rapport with the prospect. What do they suspect to be true, but haven't been able to verify yet? Is it that people just like them are able to get the results they want? Is it that their background or predispositions don’t matter? Is it that they are doing it the wrong way and there is a much easier way to do it that will make their life better?):
Enemies (Everyone has enemies. Things or people whom they hate. If we can point those out, we will create a deep rapport. Jot down exactly who and what they hate and why. If you don't know the answers, just ask the prospect. You may be surprised what you learn):
Targeting and Gathering Awareness (To learn more about the customer and what forces act on them, we want to ingest material that they are ingesting. We also want to understand how they formed their view of the world, so we want to read the books that they find most influential so we can speak to them. Example, when I was selling to startups, I needed to learn everything about startups. Product-market fit, financing, coding, etc. I consumed a ton of information quickly and became somewhat of an expert speaking to the customers):
& Many More to Understand Your Customers More Than They Understand Themselves!
🎯Leverage Case Studies (Results Vault) (Successful Outcomes Speak Themselves, Nothing Else!)
Case Studies Underpin Marketing. Without case studies, you will need to go get a case study. You do this by marketing with an initial version of a sales letter to generate opportunities organically, then you work hard to deliver for the customer. Collecting a case study could take 1-12 months.
You can use the process to get your first case study. You may need to raise money to get the case study, and you can easily prove to investors the value if you validated some of the initial acquisition metrics.
Use your case studies as proof that you can solve the problem. This message and case study ammunition underpin the entire marketing funnel and business. If you don’t have a legit case study, Go get one. Pick a person to help, get your engineering hat on and elegantly solve a problem to get a case study
Document the case studies and fill in your results vault! You just need 1-3 content pieces, a landing page and at least 1 testimonial to test your marketing and sales process.
🚀 How long does it take you to build your MVA? It should take you no more than 1-2 weeks to write and publish your MVAS.
🚀 What tools do you need? Landing page building software, keynote, calendar software like Calendly.
🚀 What skills do you need? Copywriting, some tech skills, basic marketing skills. Salesprocess.io provides templates.
🚀 How long does it take to learn these skills? It could take you years without the proper training, or a few weeks with the proper training.
🚀 Do the assets need to be perfect? No, there are the minimum viable assets. They just need to work - meaning generate leads.
State 1 (Where the customer was before the engagement (state 1 activities and outcomes that resulted from those activities):
State 2/Outcome (Customer's position after the engagement (state 2 activities and outcomes that resulted from those activities):
Timeframe (The time in which the transformation took place):
Proof that your solution is attributed to the state change (either cause effect or correlation - Graphs or Screenshots. Use the inference method to create a linear path from state 1 to state 2 if relationships between the new activities and new results are not obvious. For example: "We increased the rate of employee engagement by 10%, which increased retention rate by 25%, which resulted in a 5% increase in EBITDA." The proof will be used in the sales letter and the ads. We must make sure the proof is undeniable. Make sure that the proof is actually proof.):
Quote (An excerpt or full quote from your customer explaining the transformation. This can be written by you and sent to the customer for approval, or it can be taken from a video or audio recording of an interview, or it can be a screenshot of an email or direct quote submitted by the customer):
Picture of the customer (Most of the time one can find the picture of the customer through LinkedIn):
Explanation (The explanation tells the story of the transformation and the results of the transformation in the author's voice and reference frame. It is important to always write accurate information and "turn your customer into a hero". This explanation can help you and the customer since if this explanation is written properly, it can act as advertisement for your customer. This creates a win-win system in which the customer is happy to promote the case study since they are likely to acquire new customers as a result of doing so):
Interview (video or audio) (A video or audio clip of the customer answering interview questions is necessary to complete the case study. This video or audio recording can be collected using Zoom Interview (which is the fastest and most effective method to collect this content). In-person Interview (which requires a professional camera crew, planning, and more disruption than Zoom):
Transcription or --and--written version (The transcription of the interview can be collected using a service like rev.com. This is a cheap and easy way to transcribe the entire interview. The value created and the ROI for the customer):
🎯 Leverage Video Sales Letter (VSL) & Long Sales Letter (SL) as a Direct-Response & Branding
The benefit of utilizing VSL & SL as your direct-response copywriting & branding:
🤖One To Many Relationship - Your best salesperson in their best state, with a prepared argument can sell to the whole universe simultaneously 24/7/365 everywhere.
🤖More Qualified Prospects Automatically Show Up On Calendar - Prospects who engage with your content will self-qualify. Compared to sales people calling and qualifying, this method is much more efficient.
🤖Shorten Sales Cycles - It takes a few hours to separate someone from their hard earned cash. The VSL puts in a few hours as a "solution-indoctrination" so that salespeople can spend less time getting the deal across the finish line.
🤖Better Tracking and Tighter Feedback Loops - You can see when and where you lose prospect's attention with video analytics. This allows you to iterate messages quickly and use data to validate market resonance points.
🤖Traffic Leads To Only 1 Destination (End Point) - This allows you to have more control over your experiments & pinpoint when & where prospects are lost or disinterested. It also allows you to stay organized as you are validating markets, messages, & other foundations.
🤖Follow Ups and Contingency Plans, Remarketing Are More Effective - Because there is only 1 endpoint, the follow ups, remarketing, and email sequences lead to the same point. This eliminates complexity and increases effectiveness.
🤖Higher ROI compared to website - Lower CPD, CPL, CAC compared to website since there is only 1 clear CTA presented.
🤖Easy to Couple Top-of-Funnel Content to Sales Funnel - You can create different top-of- funnel content with unique angles and messages that lead to the same sales page. This allows you to swing your bat multiple times and only vary one thing at a time, which results in higher levels of certainty of your experiment conclusions.
🤖Faster Ramp Times for Salespeople - Sales people will watch the VSL hundreds of times to learn exactly how to sell the product from the founder or head of sales. This makes training easier and will allow you to hire remote folks who ramp faster.
🤖Traffic routes from ads, prospecting, etc. will do a quick research of whether you are legit or not. VSL is your best rep that sells to unlimited people simultaneously 24/7/365. They need time to trust you, they take circuitous paths, they do the due diligence! End terminal is a questionnaire & calendar booking. Because… without assets’ hub (vault of content) (dynamic sales letter), closing will take forever.
Combine with retargeting ads, email automation, and other supporting content (daily nurturing) to stay top-of-mind omnipresence (expert authority).
Remember, every metric matters! The difference between 2% and 2,5% conversion rate is infinitely significant.
David Ogilvy (The granddaddy of copywriting), you’ll recall that he spouts about "long form sells over short-form" "fringe time sells better than prime time", "I don’t regard ads as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information." Your customers are hungry for information and long-form copy in the form of a video sales letter or written sales letters convey that information.
Zen-Mode to write the best dynamic sales letter as your assets’ hub! Everything (funnel, website, social media profile, content, etc.) consists of 100% sales argument.
Landing page/sales page, video sales letter (or one piece of content), sales scripts.
Creating Video Content (VSL, Webinar, Masterclass, Etc.) as Video (Best Leverage) can be repurposed into long sales letters (blog, etc.), short videos (reels, tiktok, snapchat, stories, etc.), short sales letters (newsfeed post, group post, etc.), Etc.
Video is mandatory! Especially in this new era of millennials and gen-z
Don't introduce an offer and price if it's just a marketing VSL (with CTA)
Save offer and features for the sales script - extension of the marketing VSL.
Still create it, but don't record for marketing VSL.
If the sales letter is good enough, it goes viral and drops the cost of a lead down to near zero.
If you have a near-infinite amount of leads, you can solve sales, product, and profit.
It contains insights that are useful and unique such that people need to share those insights
Building VSL is the highest leverage activity one can do, especially for a salesperson or marketer. Doing this for companies right now is an effective strategy to make money. Very few do this.
Dependent on the platform since the algos are different between platforms.
Works for b2b and b2c, investment thesis, etc.
If you have an amazing market, amazing engineers, and viral dynamic sales letter skills, you will crush. Dynamic = can be leveraged in every circumstance, can be repurposed, etc.
🚀How Does The Sales Letter Relate To The Product?
The pitch designs the product. If it causes sales, it defines the jobs the solution needs to do for the customer, and it defines the price the customer is willing to pay for those jobs to be done. This bounds an engineering problem. The better you are at engineering, the more money you will make. The insights within the letter underpin the solution features.
The Process To Creating Viral Sales Letter (Create/Update Sales Letter -> Launch and Gather Feedback -> Sales? -> Create/Update Mechanism -> Mechanism Satisfies Claim Profitably? -> Cash To Rebuild and Try Again?)
Process To Create Viral Dynamic Sales Letters (Differences Between Other Sales Protocols (It accounts for movement and changing variables in the market. Constantly changing. Describes and accounts for the interdependence between marketing and product. Remote Control It's extremely efficient. Tested in harsh conditions. Assumes no money raised).
Funnel Model (Impression -> Lead -> Customer -> Cash Realized -> Retention, Ascension, & Other Infinite Upsides & Negative Downsides -> Cash Realized). The process must have a detailed breakdown of time to market, cost to market, time to sell, cost to sell, time to viral, cost to viral, cash realization rate, contract length, cost to infinite upsides, time to infinite upsides, cost to negative downsides, time to negative downsides, etc.
If you build it they won’t come. Unless you are Kim Kardashian. Once the model is determined to spit out a profitable unit case & the case study is found, it’s time to duplicate the case & tell people about the product through marketing while being enormously profitable. The result of effective marketing is an influx of qualified opportunities at a price that sustains a profitable business model, where qualified is defined as someone who has the problem for whom the solution applies, who has the money to afford the solution, & the ability or authority to buy it.
In some cases, one would engage a marketing firm to build a shiny “website” or pick up one of those handy landing page builders or templates, record a 30s-1m “explainer video” where features and technical jargon are spouted. In other cases, a junior or even a senior marketer is engaged to create opportunities through partnerships, cold outbound messages, warm network introductions, word of mouth, SEO, paid media (ads).
Sometimes these methods sort of work, however, in most cases they result in months or even years passing without much traction or lead flow, and if there’s somehow lead flow, this flow usually doesn’t sustain a profitable model. Furthermore, this flow likely contains distinct customer segments, making it almost impossible to standardize a sales process, which results in stagnation or deterioration and bare calendars.
There are many reasons why this happens, however, the main one is the lack of a pointed sales argument, specifically the founders’ or marketers’ inability to create a high-quality pointed sales argument. A sales argument is the captivating set of reasons as to why the prospect can benefit from the solution and why he or she needs it now.
The truth is that all marketing is just the regurgitation of a single sales argument that is based upon the initial case studies & their results. Without case studies or a single case study, the marketing is smoke & mirrors and isn’t likely to be compelling. The content on a high-converting funnel or sales page is essentially just the html, css, javascript mode of the sales argument. The blog videos & content on a resource index or blog index are just slight variations of the “hooks” that lead folks to the core sales argument from auxiliary locations. The outbound messages sent to cold prospects are little “nudges” that push prospects to the core sales argument that trigger a reply and intrigue. The ads are just lures created from excerpts of sales arguments dangled on the social & digital platforms that route to the core sales argument hosted on a landing page. The sales script & live pitch is the salesperson’s theatrical interpretation of the sales argument. The effectiveness and profitability of the marketing and sales efforts is directly related to the quality of the sales argument, which is related to the quality of case studies, the level of domain expertise of the one who writes the argument, the time invested of that person to write the argument, and the framework used to create the argument.
For these reasons, the founder or CEO should definitely be the one to write the core sales argument and a proven framework should definitely be used to save time. This cannot be outsourced no matter what. When the sales argument is written properly, tested & communicated through a funnel, marketing is solved & opportunities flow without much effort at a price that sustains a business model. If the argument is written well enough, it could even produce leads for 0 dollars (which is what viral marketing is all about - something so good that people share it and marketing costs is nil).
There exists a formula for creating persuasive arguments that one can use to compel viewers to take action.
🚀Who should make the video version of the sales letter? This video can be created by someone who has great communication skills, however, it’s recommended that the founder create that too since typically, the one who wrote the argument usually has a high level of enthusiasm capable of captivating an audience.
Tools & frameworks exist to make even the most introverted of introverts capable of producing highly-compelling video presentations. The sales page can be built by anyone with a decent grasp of landing page builders and who has a keen eye for design. However, be careful not to trade time to publish for visual appeal - a rough looking funnel will still convert if the argument displayed on it is sound. Let’s get a little more granular with respect to the funnel. It’s very unlikely that the prospects travel through the funnel in a linear manner - they most often get distracted and fly off into “outer space” before they consume the entire sales argument and take action. And it typically takes 7 hours of interaction between a cold prospect and your sales and marketing collateral to develop enough rapport such that the prospect feels comfortable enough to pull out their wallet and buy something.
We suspect there is some baked-in wiring our ancestors needed to determine if they could trust things and after lots of experimentation, 7 hours seems to be the magic length of time. Any less, and prospects don’t have enough rapport to pull a trigger. For this reason, it’s important that we express our argument in both written and visual form and repeat it as much as we can in as many modes and through as many mediums as we can. Below is some visitor journey data. You will notice that prospects take a circuitous path through the funnel over a span or hours or days.
To account for this wandering, email marketing contingency loops & retargeting ads are placed at different stages of the funnel to herd prospects back to where they need to be.
Both the content within the email and the content on the resource index are expanded or enriched excerpts of points within the core sales argument. It’s unlikely that the first sales argument will resonate at a viral level since feedback from the market is necessary to distill the points and language used, so small tests and iterations are required over time to really make the funnel sing. The faster and cheaper you can create the argument, express it in a funnel, and run the tests, the better. What you don’t want to do is build a funnel and drive a huge volume of traffic to it through paid ads or through channels, since this could lead to a “misfire” and waste. In general, the best way to test without any waste is by utilizing organic methods, outbound prospecting, or small paid tests to determine the funnel’s conversion rate before scaling up.
Organic means marketing without paid promotion like paid advertising or paid channel pushes. Examples of organic methods include:
Pushing content out to the current network & lead lists, if you have a lead list (opt-in).
Outbound prospecting - cold email, cold LinkedIn or Facebook messages
Posting in groups and forums where your prospects are most likely to be.
The organic funnel conversion rate should be greater than 2%. The email prospecting demo-booking rate should be greater than 2%. If these rates are not achieved, it’s best to rewrite the messages or redo the funnel such that the rate increases to the benchmark.
Specific Tactic: If you are using paid advertising to test, you can upload custom customer or lead lists into the FB or LI platforms that allow you to create lookalike audiences - audiences that resemble your lists & therefore will likely behave like your leads or customers and buy your stuff. This will help you ensure that you are getting in front of the right types of people. If you don’t have a lead list or customer list, you can narrow the audience by bounding your audiences to a specific geography and interest to conduct your small tests.
🚀How do you find groups and places where your audience will be? Just find a LinkedIn Profile and a Facebook Profile of someone in your target market and look at the interests they have displayed on their public profiles. Using these interests as an anchor, you can find groups, forums, or blogs where prospects are likely to be, then get your organic posts in front of them.
The funnel is a living & breathing thing that must be continually updated. If your sales argument is working, it won’t take long for competitors to copy or clone it, so updating it with quality content is a great way to stay ahead of everyone.
Develop a Sales Argument. You can read books like “The Ultimate Sales Letter”, by Dan Kennedy, “Dotcom Secrets” by Russel Brunson, The Boron Letters by Halbert, Breakthrough Advertising by Schwartz, or you can use the Salesprocess.io Framework inspired by many of these leaders and refined by testing.
Develop A Funnel: Purchase a Template & look to other high-converting websites for inspiration, or you can use our proven framework & tools that have generated over $500M+ only from upfront revenue since 2012. There is definitely no need to reinvent the wheel.
The sales argument and sales letter is a written document that is compelling enough to drive a cold prospect to action. It communicates the claim, the unique value prop, the mechanism, the price, the points of difference, etc. The sales argument is communicated in the pages, the emails, the ads, the outbound messages, etc.. If you have a strong sales argument, then generating appointments will be easy. There is a specific step-by-step process that we follow that is tried and tested. We walk you through building the outline, and written version. You will submit this to us to review for structure. We of course will provide you with all the templates to craft hyper-compelling sales arguments and sales letters. Then we will tune it and edit it.
After the sales letter is written, we will create the video sales letter.
Prospects love consuming content via video since it requires less work for them. So, next we help you translate that sales argument to a video sales letter. This VSL will be used on your marketing pages. Consider it to be your best salesperson, in their best state who can sell to 1M people simultaneously.
🚀 Do VSLS work for b2b companies? Execs? Yes, they do. The best hedge funds and investment banks in the world use video sales letter presentations to sell ideas and products to the richest and most sophisticated people on the planet.
🚀 Where is the VSL used? To warm up cold traffic to your ideas and thesis. You can use it between the demo booking event and the demo event. You can use it in follow ups, and you can use it to engage other decision-makers within an organization.
🚀 How do you build a VSL? You will need to learn from someone who knows what they are talking about. There is a formula and there are many sand traps to watch out for.
🚀 Who should write and record the VSL? Founders, execs, folks who are closest to the business should be writing since the information enclosed requires deep domain expertise. A junior person can record it if the script is defined.
🚀 How long does it take to write and record? With the proper training, it could take 1-2 weeks to write and 1 week to record and edit. You will likely have to create multiple renditions until you get the right message and voice.
🚀 What type of technology is used in this marketing funnel? You will need a landing page builder, a calendar software, a quiz software, a CRM and an email automation sequence. This tech is straightforward. The errors come from the content and synchronization of the tools.
🚀 What does niche-specific funnel mean?
1 funnel should target one niche. Meaning if you have multiple people/problem/solution combinations, then you will need to run multiple funnels.
🚀 Who can build the funnel?
A junior person can build the funnel. The heavy lifting has been already done by the founders and execs at this point. However, the founders can build the funnel if they have bandwidth.
🚀 How do you know the funnel works?
If it puts appointments on your calendar. If it doesn't then you will need to tweak the messaging and foundational copy.
🚀 How long does writing a sales letter take? It usually takes a few days to properly craft your sales argument. Some clients spend a little longer and “go up to the mountains”. This is one of the highest-leverage activities you can possibly do. Once it is written we will help tune it and make it solid. Where is the sales letter used? Sophisticated buyers love consuming content via written word. This sales argument will be published on all of your Social profiles, blogs, email signatures, etc.. It will also be transposed to video form or webinar form and page form. Why do we write the sales letter before we build the website? The website is just a html, css, and javascript interpretation of the core sales argument. Building the pages is not difficult, there are many landing page builders out there that will help you do this job in 30mins -1 day. The challenge is writing the words that convert and communicating a compelling argument that can be displayed on the sales pages. The sales letter is that argument. This is why we derive it first.
🚀 Will my customers actually watch a video sales letter?
A few years ago, Ray Dalio produced a video called “how the economy works”. In this 25 minute video, Ray explains the relationships between short term debt, long term debt and productivity. This video was watched 10 million times. The engagement was insane. The reason was because the content was useful. Your video content will be optimized for utility. People will stay engaged for hours as long as the content is useful to them. We will help you develop useful content. This type of content can be in video form, or just long form written style. It’s been proven that it takes approximately 7 hours of interaction for a customer to develop enough trust with you to buy. The video helps build that trust.
🚀 How long does it take to craft and record a video sales letter?
It takes approximately 1 day to write and 1 day to record. Of course, you will have to go through a few iterations to get it perfect, however, it often doesn’t take much longer than a few days. The ROI on this activity is about $40k per hour since the leverage is so high.
🚀 What’s the difference between a VSL and a webinar?
A video sales letter is very similar to a webinar, however a webinar is typically in a live environment using slightly different software that prevents people from exiting out of the window. A VSL can be hosted on a regular sales page.
🚀 Where else is this video used?
The VSL is used in all communications: You can publish on Youtube, LinkedIn, host in your email signature, host on your website, on your landing pages, your sales pages, in your follow up emails, etc..
🚀 What if I’m not comfortable on video?
If you are not comfortable on video, don’t worry. No one is when they start. We will support through this process and have you start with audio if you are not fully comfortable on video yet. It’s perfectly normal to be a little anxious about being on video the very first time.
🚀 Who records the video?
We will be helping you record the video. All you need is a cheap mic, and Google Slides. We will walk you through how to record, edit, host, and syndicate your videos. It takes a few times to get perfect, just like anything, but we will guide you through the entire process.
🚀 Can I outsource the creation of the video?
We don’t recommend outsourcing the video creation since doing so will result in an unnecessary delay to getting your funnels up and running. Agencies or 3rd-party services could take weeks or months to produce a video and that video could not even work since the message could be off! We help our customers craft videos within 1 day, publish them, test the message and engagement and then iterate. The beauty of doing this is that it’s free, it’s much more effective and you are able to get your message out the door in a matter of days instead of months. As a result, you will be able to find the market-message resonance much faster than if you were to engage someone to do this for you.
🚀 What’s an opt-in page?
An opt-in page, also known as a lead-gen page, or lead capture page, or squeeze page, or bait page is used to capture email addresses and contact information from visitors of your site. It offers some sort of value (a model, template, training, report, data) in exchange for an email address. They are used to collect leads and they come in handy when you are driving cold traffic to the pages.
🚀 What tools do you use?
We recommend using landing page builders to start because they are easy to use and allow you to publish funnels extremely quickly. We are versed with many of them - Clickfunnels, Hubspot pages, Instapage, Webflow, etc.. They all do the same job, but some are better than others. If you are comfortable building pages using html, css, and javascript, we will give you the code and templates so you can adapt them to your business. If you are comfortable using Ruby on Rails, we will give you the rails code that we use in our landing pages for you to adapt to your’s.
🚀 What’s a sales page?
A sales page is used to convert visitors into tripwire events (a trial, a quiz, a demo, a small purchase). It displays the sales argument in the form of either written word or video. It can be made either by hand or with a page builder like Clickfunnels or Instapage, or Webflow, or Hubspot pages. The builder doesn’t matter; the words on the page matter with respect to the conversion rate.
🚀 Do I have to be technical to build this?
You don’t have to be technical to implement this process. All pages and processes are mapped out and templates are provided. You will just need to use landing page builders and drag and drop elements to fit the skeleton we provide to you. However, if you are technical, we will give you the source code and rails app so you can move extremely quickly.
🚀 Who’s writing the copy?
We are providing the foundational templates and skeletons, you will be filling them in, then sending to us for review. Once they are reviewed, you will be making the iterations. The copy for the sales pages and funnels is already written in the form of your sales argument. We are simply transposing that argument to funnel form. We will then tune the sales letter and make the copy work.
🚀 What if my product is not built yet?
If your product is not built yet we will be building what are called the Minimum Viable Assets. These assets will be used to get enough attention and provide enough credibility such that you will be able to generate your first 20-100 appointments so you can test your product hypothesis and pre-sell your offer. You never want to build before pre-selling to avoid costly errors.
🚀 How long does it take to build this funnel?
An experienced marketer can build a funnel in 1 day. If you are starting from scratch and it’s your first funnel, it might take you a few days to get your head around the software tools and how to use them. We provide you with everything you need to make sure you can create a funnel in as little time as humanly possible, even if you are a complete newbie.
Before we ramp up marking and step on the gas, we want to test the assets to first make sure that the claim and messaging converts. The test is pretty clear: The assets either generate leads and opportunities or they don't’.
During this phase, we will be helping you test your assets and determine or refine your message. If we need to change our messaging, we will quickly make the iterations.
When it comes to writing your sales argument & sales letter, instead of reading a ton of copywriting books & arranging together with the copywriting formula yourself to create a quality sales argument, which takes years, we help you derive a complete sales argument that is likely to convert using our templates & one-on-one revisions with our team. This saves you a ton of time and ensures that the sales argument is most likely to convert. You can use our templates to create your first sales letter, then upload it to the platform and it will be reviewed in 24 hours before turning it into a funnel.
Once you have your case study or case studies, you install a funnel and pack the calendar for yourself so that you can start taking sales calls to get more customers.
If your first case study allowed you to scale up and get equity in the business, then that’s great.
Write The Sales Letter For Yourself
The first sales letter is simply the explanation of the case study.
You walk through the steps that you took while you were getting your first spectacular case study.
Include as much detail as you can without giving away too much.
You may need to check with your last customer to make sure that everything is kosher and that you are not sharing sensitive information that could harm the business. This is usually just a quick email convo.
Your Unique Insight Is The Marketing and Sales Hack You Uncovered
While working with your case study business, you may have uncovered a marketing and sales hack that can be applied in adjacent areas (not direct competitors btw). For example: If you got some experience buying ads and running an inside sales team, then you can apply those skills to a new business and create value.
Record The Sales Letter
If you went through the growth consulting process before with your case study, you would have some experience assembling sales letters. Recycle those skills at this point and create a sales letter for yourself.
Build The Funnel and Update Your Assets
Once you have your sales letter written and recorded, create a funnel. The funnel is extremely simple at this point. It only includes the video sales letter, the written version, some assets and some proof shots, and some initial content to show you working at the office. Example Of Rough Content: https://youtu.be/aArac3F0lmk What is looks like to make it rain: https://youtu.be/SKTn85jYi9M
The Marketing Funnel is Niche-Specific and Speaks To Your Case Study. The niche-specificity of the sales letter allows you to achieve resonance in the market. This will cut your time to market and sales cycle down significantly. You will not have any problems booking meetings if you have a strong case study. You should be able to pick up all the customers that are similar to the niche.
🎯Leverage Organic Inbound (Human (Manual) + Technology (Eliminate, Automate, & Optimize)
Determine Channel - Where Can We Find Them? Finding Paid Traffic Audiences On Platform (LI, FB, YT, Twitter, Blog, Customer List, Lookalike List, Paid Prospecting List, Influencers, Bind to Location for Testing). If you can’t access them, then reconsider your strategy or innovate your distribution channel.
Testing Claims On Earned Audiences: Some of you may already have an earned audience from years of work and money spent. Either an email list and or a social media connection, these are channels that allow you to live test and gain feedback rapidly. Ex: When I launched a product that taught people how to build sales teams. I quickly spun up a VSL, recorded it on my phone while driving (status delta) then launched it to my list and social media. I was able to book calls immediately from this ad and validate the price of the offer. I pushed this to all of my social platforms organically (LI, YT, FB, IG, Blog, Etc.).
Marketing (Best Leverage). Without Marketing, There'll be no Sales, Without Sales, There’ll be No Product Delivered & Indeed Business is Impotent!
VIRAL MARKETING = BEST LEVERAGE
VIRAL: Amplify paid marketing and outbound efforts - dropping CPM and increasing conversion rates across the board. This Increases efficiency of the sales team. Reps just regurgitate the message within the letter. Prospects sell themselves.
SIMPLE: Collapses all sales & marketing down to a single point. Single message. Single terminal.
PRODUCT: Rapidly find product-market-fit since the demand from the resonance of sales letters generates sales and cash, which sets bounds on engineering problems, funds the business, & product designers know exactly what to build because they have lots of awareness from the traffic and conversations.
Before we ramp up marking and step on the gas, we want to test the assets to first make sure that the claim and messaging converts. The test is pretty clear: The assets either generate leads and opportunities or they don't’.
During this phase, we will be helping you test your assets and determine or refine your message. If we need to change our messaging, we will quickly make the iterations.
If you are testing a b2b offer, we are going to work with you to develop your outbound and organic strategy such that you can predictably generate opportunities and test the assets to make sure you have high-resonance.
If you are selling B2B, we will show you how to use LinkedIn and cold email to generate at least 3 opportunities per day or 20 per week.
Organic testing is the process of syndicating your assets and value-content through organic channels like Youtube, Linkedin, Facebook without pushing using paid traffic. You are able to test messages and content quickly via these organic channels for free.
If you are selling using an automated funnel, we will help you develop the automated sequence such that you can drive conversions. In this step, it’s common that the pricing and features are tweaked to align better to the market’s desires. We will help you iterate your offer and your price such that you will be able to close at least 20% of demos at a price that sustains the profitable business model. If you are unable to get sales at a price that sustains a profitable business, we will need to go back and iterate either the message, the price, or the product/service. This can take a few months, but this is the quickest way to validate the profitable business model.
Scaling With An Automated Funnel
If your offer is lower-ticket or you are leading with a free-trial, we will dial in your funnel, your video sales letters, and your follow up sequence to help you achieve high returns on your marketing.
Automated funnels are tricky to get profitable since they significantly depend on the cost of traffic and the amount of competitors in the market. There is less margin or error with them than inside sales funnels, however, they can scale quickly if you keep them profitable.
Don’t use it unless you are youtube famous and you have a backend high-ticket funnel.
🚀What type of organic content works?
The best type of organic content optimizes for utility. It is useful to your customers and prospects. We already helped you create the compelling content, so all we will be doing in the phase is publishing it to organic channels. If your funnel doesn’t convert with free methods, you will need to go back and fix it.
DO NOT START ADVERTISING BEFORE YOU CAN CONVERT COLD OUTBOUND TRAFFIC.
Advertising is an amplifier.
If you amplify something that works, you will grow fast. If you amplify a turd, you will get a massive turd.
Take your time and make sure your funnel and assets convert ice cold prospecting traffic into warm, buttery, leads.
🚀When should I install an automated funnel?
You want to install an automated funnel before you are certain that your trial or tripwire converts with the messaging you used during the inside sales process. If this is not done before you lean on the automated funnel, the automated funnel will likely yield negative returns.
🚀What if my product is low-ticket and I want to use an automated funnel?
If your product is low-ticket, we still need to test the resonance with methods that don’t scale like inside sales and one-on-one webinars. This allows you to get the feedback necessary quickly. Automated funnels are great, but there is a time and a place for them. In the beginning, you don’t want to introduce any unnecessary feedback delays.
Organic Traffic Inputs
Organic_view_per_month (The amount of views the organic piece of content gets per month. Add organic traffic costs into fixed costs):
Organic_lead_to_view_conversion_rate (The rate at which an organic view turns into a lead. Typically higher than 2%. This is measured by using some analytics software. If the lead is defined by a simple opt-in, then it will be higher than if the lead is defined as a quiz. Typically organic leads are easier to convert. This can also be referral leads):
Time_to_market_organic (The time it takes for that initial piece of content to generate the leads. Typically it will take 30-60 days):
Lead_to_customer_conversion_rate (The rate at which an organic lead turns into a customer. This is typically higher than paid and outbound rates. Could be around 8%):
Viral Traffic Inputs
Viral Component (If you can get a viral engine going, you can scale extremely quickly and get very rich):
Number_of_invites per customer (The average number of invites a customer sends. Many customers could send zero, so that's why it's an average):
Viral_conversion_rate (The rate at which an invite turns into a sale. This is typically 5-10%):
Viral_time (The average time between the invite and the sale. The viral time is significant. The faster this time, the faster your thing will grow):
Viral_start (When does the first invite start?):
Viral Cost To Sell (Discount for the referral. Set this to zero if you don't have a discount in place):
Viral Cost To Market (The amount you pay a customer to refer you to a lead once that lead closes. How much do you pay the affiliate?):
🎯Leverage Organic Outbound (Human (Manual) + Technology (Eliminate, Automate, & Optimize)
Outbound prospecting requires time, not money. If you don't have a lot of money, or you are selling to a very small market, outbound prospecting will work for you.
It's extremely effective if you do it properly. Not just spamming.
It scales if your ticket price is over $8k per year since you can hire end-to-end reps.
It takes time to get working. You will likely iterate your message multiple times. You will need to be patient.
It's basically door-to-door sales on the internet.
You can reach sophisticated buyers.
You can combine cold calling and Linkedin messaging for best results.
You can train junior folks to be effective with this method.
It could take you 2-3 months to become proficient with outbound prospects.
It requires you to be comfortable getting "nos". Not for the faint of heart.
You must sell by yourself before bringing other reps and they must start with end-to-end so that they respect the value of every single lead that comes in. Leading by example!
Follow-Up in every process! Use Automation to Save Time (Zapier, Close, Slack, Active Campaign, Calendly, Jotform, Clickfunnels, Retargeting Ads (LI, FB, Google, YT, Etc.)
Test the funnel with organic methods (posting & prospecting) before you run cold ads.
Run Outbound Prospecting Campaigns Using Your Sales Letter (Now that you have your funnel and assets set up, you can start marketing and lining up appointments with new prospects. Start with LinkedIn, run connection automations with the automation tool, search for companies who are similar to companies of your case study. Send 100 touchpoints per day and start booking 2-4 meetings per day. Once you have enough meetings, start focusing on the sales script. Write your sales script and start to develop the dynamic sales letter yourself by developing awareness of all the customer’s situation and objections. Update the script in real time and update the marketing videos to address some of the objections. Host those videos on YouTube and Facebook and Instagram)
Keep Expenses Low (At this phase you will be making $30k-$100k per month by working with a few clients. Keep expenses low so you can bank capital for when you start to deploy your capital with your skills in the next few steps)
Use organic sources to validate MVA. If the assets don't get appointments or leads, then you will need to rework them or the channel you are using.
Start with Organic mining - posting on social channels and mining your network. Visitor -> Demo > 15%
Start doing outbound prospecting to validate your messaging. Visitor -> Demo > 5%.
Start testing paid advertising to validate markets on social platforms. Visitor -> Demo > 5%.
Validate that you can predictable generate opportunities.
Sell + Tweaking Product & Pricing
Outbound Email & LinkedIn: At Least 3000 Emails (100 Sniper Daily). Prospecting won’t work if you don’t have great content (assets’ hub). You should be looking for >80% open rate because you go sniper.
🚀How many messages a day should one send to get results? For best results, it's important for you or reps to send at least 30 personalized messages.
🚀How many touch points are in the sequence? A minimum of 4, but if you are selling to enterprise buyers, it could take 12-20 over a few month period.
🚀What makes a good outbound message? Personalization and value add. You want to provide massive amounts of value in the first few messages and call out something personal. Decision makers are smart - they don't want to feel like you didn't invest anything into contacting them.
🚀Who should be writing the messages and running the tests? Founders should start, even if they think it's beneath them. The founder or exec will need to switch up the message on the fly to find the fit as soon as possible. This is difficult for a junior person to do.
🚀What happens if you can't get those conversion rates? It just means that the message is off. We will need to go back and rewrite the MVA and launch campaigns again.
🚀How long does it take to start seeing results? You should start to see results within 1 day - 7 days.
🚀Where should I start? Start with Organic mining, then do outbound prospecting, the test paid ads.
🚀How hard is it to get this part of the machine working? Pretty challenging. There are lots of moving parts. Converting cold traffic into hot leads is marketing's main job. You must own this
🚀Who’s sending the cold messages? We will be working with you to help you send the cold emails and cold LinkedIn messages. We will be providing you with all templates, tools, workflows, and mindsets to help you be most effective during this process. There is very little margin for error when it comes to outbound prospecting. Every word matters, every sentence, every period. If the message communicates the wrong tone, it could result in a poor demo conversion rate. This is why we work with our customers to make their messages sound amazing.
🚀What tools are used and how much do they cost? There are many tools available to facilitate the outbound process. Some of these tools include: outbound email automation software like Reply.io, Woodpecker, Hubspot...Linkedin automation tools like Ulinc, CRMs like close.io and Hubspot, Data scrapers like Lead Leader. We don’t like using automation until we know the message is working. For this reason we start by recommending close.io, Gmail, LinkedIn Sales Nav, Leadleaper. Automating connection requests via LinkedIn is another great way to build your organic following. We will set you up with tools like Ulinc (linkedin automation) and provide you with discount codes. Currently, you will have to go through us to get access to Ulinc. The cost per rep is approximately $100-$200 per month. You will be able to get all the appointments you want using these tools.
🚀Do I have to do cold calling? One version of outbound prospecting includes cold calling, however, it is not required to get 2-4% contact to opportunity rate. We do provide training on cold calling tactics. We came from the door-to-door world and are definitely not afraid of picking up the phone and making a few dials :)
Starting State Variables
Starting State:
Cash:
Debt:
Debt Interest Rate:
Assets:
Liabilities that don't include debt:
C_0: Number of customers with which you are starting:
TAM: Total Addressable market (Not the entire market, but the amount of customers that you could potentially get if you were a monopoly. In a market, a monopoly can get 50-60%. Look at all of the people in the market, then estimate how many of those people you can get, then take 50-60% to get domination):
The upfront investment in the product (Sometimes you need to spend money to get an offer built):
Product Inputs
Price (The average price of the offer. Recall this is offer-specific):
Realization Rate (The rate at which you realize the cash from the price (accounts for defaulting). Typically this is 95%. The higher the price, the higher the realization rate):
C_f: The Cost To Fulfill (The cost to fulfill relative to the price. Cost to fulfill Revenue - Cogs. This will determine the gross contribution. How much profit is each thing making the business before marketing. Unit economics. In software, the c_f is typically around 10-15%. This includes support and all costs required to deliver on the promises made in the offer. A service business is typically 20-30%. If the solution is a hybrid, you can blend the two. The lower the better. This is one of the key metrics):
T_c: Time To Collect (Time to collect with respect to the price of the offer (in days). The shorter, the better):
Contract length (The length of time between the first purchase and the time of the event where the customer rebuys if the churn rate is less than 100%):
Refund Period (The average period in which a customer will refund if the customer does refund which is determined by the refund rate):
Churn Rate (The rate at which the customer does not renew for the renewal offer at the renewal price. If there is upsell, you can think of the churn rate as non-zero):
P_renewal (The price the customer pays for the renewal offer):
C_s_renewal (The cost to sell the renewal if there is a renewal. Typically there is a rep designated to sell renewal accounts. Expressed in a % of the renewal price. Typically 5-10%):
C_f_renewal (The cost to fulfill on the renewal. This could be the same as the first cost to fulfill if it's the same product):
T_c_renewal (the time it takes for the customer to pay the entire renewal price):
T_c: Time To Collect (Time to collect with respect to the price of the offer (in days). Shorter is better):
General Sales And Marketing
Cost_to_sell (The amount relative to price required to sell the offer. This is the initial sales):
Time_to_sell (The sales cycle length in days. The shorter the better. This is the initial sale):
Average_number_of_deals_per_rep (The average number of deals a single sales rep can sell per month.
This will determine the amount of sales reps needed to be hired):
Non-Granular Marketing
C_dot (The amount of new customers per month):
C_m (How much does it cost in marketing dollars to get a customer? The cost to market relative to price. The marketing cost required to get a single customer. The CAC - Cost To Sell (typically the commission of a rep)):
Time_to_market (The time required to generate a lead that is closed by sales. The total time to acquire a customer is the time_to_market + time_to_sell):
Outbound Inputs
Outbound Salary (The amount to pay an SDR (sales development representative) per month for them to hit the required number of touch-points):
Number_of_contacts_per_month (The amount of contacts a single SDR (sales development representative) hits per month. In high-velocity sales, the SDRS can hit 2000 new prospects per month (this is not just touch-points, it's new prospects):
Number_of_SDRs (The amount of SDRs on the team. This number can change. You can create multiple models that represent the time of the business):
Outbound_contact_to_lead_rate (The rate at which an outbound message results in a lead (meeting booked, or interest)):
Benchmark is 2% + (You need to improve the sales letter and the ad to generate a lead):
Time_to_market_outbound (The time between the first cold message and the event where the prospect books a meeting or turns into a lead. This is typically 2-7 days in an outbound campaign. With enterprise sales, it could be 7-14 days):
Lead_to_customer_conversion_rate (The rate at which an outbound lead turns into a customer. This is dependent on the sales letter. The sales letter is the script. Can be turned into a video sales letter):
Sales and Prospecting Specific Metrics (Daily)
Number of new contacts hit (How many new contacts were scraped and reached out to for the first time?):
Number of touch-points (includes both new contacts and follow ups in the discovery phase):
Open rate (When you send your cold email, what % of people opened it? If this number is less than 30%, your subject line or the quality of your data (accuracy of contact) needs to improve):
Discovery Calls Booked (How many new discovery calls were booked during the day of activity?):
Discovery call or demo booking rate (Typically greater than 2% if the campaign is done property. If less than 2%, the message, subject line, or data quality needs to improve):
Discovery calls scheduled for the day (How many discovery calls are already on the calendar during the day of activity from the previous day's work?):
Discovery calls showed up for the day (Out of those that were already on the calendar, how many of those discovery calls showed up?):
Discovery Call Show Up Rate (The ratio of discovery calls showed up to discovery calls booked on the day of activity):
Demos Booked (How many new demos were booked during the day of activity. These could come from the discovery calls or from chat or inbound):
Demos Booked for the day (How many demos are already on the calendar during the day from the previous day's activity?):
Demos Showed Up (How many demos showed up completed):
Demo Show Up Rate (The ratio of Demos Showed Up To Demos Booked):
Offers Made (The amount of offers made during the day from the demos completed):
Offer Rate (The ratio of offers made to the demos that showed up):
Deposits/Trials (The amount of deposits or trials completed for the day. Getting the deposit requires less friction than getting a full sale):
Deposit/Trial Rate (Deposits/Trials/Demos Scheduled):
Accounts Closed (How many new accounts were closed on the day):
Revenue (How much new revenue was brought in during the day of activity?):
Cash (How much cash was brought in during the day of activity):
Revenue Per Demo Booked (A key metric for sales efficiency. The average revenue per demo scheduled. Average Revenue Over The Month Number Of Demos Scheduled. This number should not be the average revenue/demos shown up since the efficiency of the salesperson is determined by the efficacy of the follow-up routine and the reschedule routine):
Notes (What happened today? How do you feel? What objections did you encounter today? Where did you struggle? What could you improve?):
Lead Source (Where did the lead originate from?):
Using Your CRM (The CRM is a tool that keeps you organized and facilitates your workflow. It is set up in a way that corresponds to the stages in the funnel. In the CRM, you have a contact dimension (which includes the company and the people within the company to whom you are communicating).and you have a deal or opportunity dimension (the offer and the stage at which the offer exists in the funnel or customer buying journey):
Lead Parameters In CRM
Name:
Company:
Email:
Phone:
Lead Source:
Temperature Or Quality Score (Determined by a questionnaire or by a discovery call):
Status: Potential Lead, Qualified Lead, Not Interested, Customer, Blacklist:
Owner: What sales rep owns the lead:
Deal/Opportunity Status In CRM
Disco Scheduled
Disco No Show
Demo Scheduled
Demo No Show
Demo Completed Not Closed
Deposit (with value)
Won (with value)
Workflows In CRM
You set up your CRM in a way that makes your job easier. You align to the priorities.
When you are optimizing for cash:
1. Hit Deposits who haven't fully closed first
2. Hit demo completed not closed who are still qualified (on the fence)
3. Hit Demo No Show Who are still qualified
4. Hit Demo Scheduled To Confirm they are coming
5. Hit Disco No Shows that are still qualified
6. Hit Disco Scheduled to confirm they are coming and to get a touchpoint in
7. Hit potential leads that have not yet booked a discovery call
If you reach out to a prospect and they explicitly state they are not interested, then mark them as not interested in the CRM. If they are explicitly qualified, then mark them as qualified in the CRM. If you reach out to a prospect and they ghost, but don't tell you that they are explicitly disinterested, then mark them as a potential.
Creating Smart Lists That Correspond To Workflows
Workflows and smart lists eliminate a lot of the thinking work required to stay organized. Ideally, you want to show up in your chair, know exactly what you need to do, then do it without much thinking. Your thinking and willpower needs to be conserved for closing and pitching.
Smart Lists:
Hot: Qualified + Deposit
Hot: Qualified + Demo Completed Not Closed No Communication For 1 Day
Hot No Show: Qualified Demo No Show + No Communication For 3 Days
Demos Scheduled: Leads with opportunity: Demo Scheduled (this is pipeline)
Discos Scheduled: Leads with opportunity: Disco Scheduled
Discos Rescheduled: Leads with opportunity: Disco No Show + Qualified
Qualified Leads: Leads with status qualified No Communication For 3 Days
Fresh Leads: Leads with status potential + No Communication For 3 Days
The smart lists will automatically update themselves since they have the activity parameter in their filter. When you sit down in the cockpit, you are just clearing the lists.
Accurate CRM Data: You must make sure the CRM data is accurate. If you fail to update a lead status or opportunity status, you will become disorganized and your output will go down significantly. It is a mortal sin to not keep clean CRM data.
Blacklisting: When a prospect explicitly requests to not ever be contacted again, update the status to blacklist. You have a general blacklist that spans across the organization so that no new reps contact a blacklisted contact
Importing New Data: When you import new lead data, you want to check it against the current CRM to make sure no duplicates exist and that no blacklist data exists that could be mis-labeled. You can do this with a script or excel spreadsheet
Track Everything In Real Time (Minute to minute tracking is key. If you hit a cold call or an email, track it in your CRM - CRM tools will likely track this for you. If you have a conversation with a prospect or a prospect brings up a topic, write it in your notes. You want your notes to be extremely detailed. You may not know it at the time, but you are ingesting a ton of information that you will synthesize later. Your best insights will come as a result of the forest of information you are ingesting. The more detailed the notes, the better. If you ever need to go back through the CRM and solve something or analyze the data, you have your notes for reference. If you have terrible handwriting, type. You can type faster than you can write by hand, and it's much easier to read during review. If a prospect drops a name, write it down for name dropping later on. The notes are the key. Don't automate notes! The whole point of tracking is to remind yourself of stuff. You want to feel the data, or feel the numbers. Include your call transcripts in the CRM. When you do your revisions, it's useful to have the language the prospects use. What people say and how they say it are different. If you can tell by the prospect's tonality that something is important or something is not important (or that the prospect doesn't believe what he/she is saying), then mark that in the notes-interpretation is important. Eventually you will become really good at picking up signals simply how people behave in front of you).
Combine Data With Source Text and Formulas To Get Insight (In order to make the right judgment, make sure you have accurate "rules." Learn the cause-effect relationships from programs or texts so you can apply them as you are going along. This is what applied science (engineering) is all about. You can work extremely hard and nun experiments like crazy, but you don't need to solve things all by yourself to get to the answer or insight. Chances are, someone already solved the problem, you just haven't come across the solution or interpretation yet. There are equations, formulas, and frameworks that already exist that you can leverage to get to a result or answer quickly. It's important to combine avid experimentation and a really good work ethic with the proper source texts or in prospecting, industry information)
Keep Feedback Loops Tight (In general, keep feedback loops tight. A feedback look is the mechanism that allows you to get data back from the activities you do and inputs you provide to the system. You push a button, then see what happens... The shorter the time it takes you to see what happens, the shorter we say the feedback loop is. When the feedback loops are short, you can learn faster since you are not waiting around for the results to improve your lattice of understanding. As a prospector, you are throwing phrases at the wall, watching what happens and ingesting data, interpreting the data, coming up with conclusions, then applying the insights to get a better result. Sometimes you will not understand a phrase or concept a prospect referenced and you will be forced to look it up. Do so right away. Use wikipedia or search the internet so that you can solidify your understanding. Don't continue working with lots of gaps in your knowledge. When you are reading technical arguments, go through them slowly so you understand them. When you are reading books with a lot of fluff in them, skip over the fluff and stories and try to pick out the core concepts (this is essentially speed reading). Once you find the core concepts, then go back over the rest of the book and try to fill in the lattice with some of the examples and stories presented in the book. Once you feel like you understand the concept enough to apply it, then stop and move on to apply the concept. Then apply the concept until you can't get it wrong through practice)
Get Significant Data Sets (When you run experiments, you need to do so properly in that you need enough data to get to a conclusion that we say is "significant". "Significant'' just means that you have enough data points to accurately conclude something. For example, if you only have 1 data point, you can't accurately determine a cause-effect relationship between an input and an output. If you have two data points, you still can't very accurately determine the relationship. If you have 100 data points, and you notice a trend, then you can start to accurately determine a relationship. In general, the more data you have, the more significant your conclusions will be if you followed the proper method. For example in marketing: When you are testing a message, you need at least 100 eyeballs on your message, and calls to get any significant data. If you only send 20 emails, get zero responses and spend half a day doing it, you do not have anywhere near enough data to make a call. You could have gotten a response on your 21st email or your 31st email and end up with a 3% demo booking rate. But if you didn't get enough data and stopped too early, you would get a false negative and change something that otherwise wouldn't need to be changed. This is why tracking is so important. If we just use our gut or intuition to determine cause-effect relationships, then we will often get things wrong & change things that shouldn't be changed based on how we feel. If someone on the team assumes something, ask to see the data. If there are one or two data points, disregard. If someone extremely experienced says something (someone with a ton of data points or reference points in their head, weigh their input more than others).
Seek Feedback From Experts And Mentors (Seeking answers on your own can work, however, there are shortcuts. Asking others who have done a similar thing what they think and how they would solve it will result in a faster time to the correct answer. Fastest way to learn is to ask someone)
Leverage Automation When Needed (There are many tools out there that automate things. What things you automate matters. In general, don't try to automate things until you have proven that the process you are automated is right by doing it manually. For example: Outbound emailing and prospecting-don't try blasting or automated messaging until you've proven it with manual process. Sales: don't try leveraged sales like using a video sales letter until you have proven conversion manually with either a webinar or live one-on-one sales call. Technical types will try to jump to automation and optimization immediately. Prevent this from happening because it doesn't work and wastes time)
Dynamic Sales Process
Create the perfect pitch
Create the perfect solution
Create the perfect offer/price
Find the avatar and update the description of avatar
Create the perfect vsl which will be used to scale
Must do at least 50-100 sales calls yourself. It will get really good as you do 500 calls.
Do not outsource or hire yet.
The sales process is dynamic. You are updating the sales letter on the fly to fit it to the avatar.
Sales Environment, Mindset, & Habits
Air: You need clean air. If you breathe in toxins, you affect your body in negative ways: the body spends energy trying to expel and handle toxins instead of doing productive work. If you breathe bad air, you will slow down. In cities, you may not have the luxury of having an abundance of clean air, so you want to install air filters & devices in your living quarters & work quarters to make sure you always have clean air.
Water: You need clean water. Again, the more toxins your body needs to handle, the less energy you have to do productive work. Get a water filter for your drinking water and shower water. The water filtration systems within city infrastructure are not perfect, so you will need to counter the negative effects.
Shelter and Safety: You need a quiet and safe place to work. Noise and distraction is the enemy of focus. When you set up your office, make sure it's in a quiet area. If you must use noise canceling headphones or earplugs for when you are doing deep work. You also want your environment to be safe. If you are worried about people breaking in, or some other threat, your body won't be able to focus on anything else and this will affect productivity negatively. If you live in a sketchy neighborhood, move when you can afford to do so. Be high up. In war, you don't want to camp in valleys: you are susceptible to floods and ambushes. You want to be at the high-point. Your body will be more relaxed when you are at the high-point and this will improve productivity
Limit Radiation: If you are working in the sun, or with a ton of ambient will or 5g. you are exposing your body to radiation (photons with energy). Because these photons can cause damage, your body will spend energy protecting yourself from the radiation. If the radiation is strong enough, you could even develop problems from all the oxidative stress. To limit radiation, work in a room without windows, use blue blocking glasses, have limited white or fluorescent light, and if you really want to optimize, wear radiation protective clothing like hands and shirts. You will feel better and function at better performance.
Food: The food you put in your body will determine how much energy you have and how much focus you have. Stay away from foods that contain excess amounts of toxins and preservatives. These foods will force your body to spend energy expelling them and that means less energy for productive work. Eat clean if you can, have a high-protein diet (if you can afford to do so), eat greens (but wash them beforehand to remove parasites), drink lots of water (have a large water jug on your desk and have a mini fridge with water beside your desk). Don't eat high sugar foods or gluten. Everyone has parasites in their body (as gross as that sounds), and parasites use sugar as a food source. If you eat sugar, you energize the parasites and then your immune system needs to spend time and energy fighting them off, which interrupts your focus and productivity. If you are eating carbs, keep the carbs complex (no white breads, sugars, etc.). Keep your diet constant. You can't adjust if you are introducing variance to your diet every day. Pick a few meals that you enjoy and eat them every day. You eat to live, not live to eat. If you spend time constantly thinking about new types of food to eat, you spend less time thinking about selling and being productive. Don't go out to dinner every night or introduce restaurant food too frequently. Although it may taste good, you don't really know what the chef is putting in the food. This introduces variance in your diet and makes it harder for you to tune to high-performance. Track your food intake. If this is a new habit, then you may require some time to develop the habit. To develop a habit, you want to track the inputs for at least 67 days. So, for 67 days track your food. You can use an app like Myfitnesspal or something similar to do that. Or Apple notes on your phone. Don't have cheat days. Cheat days are days where you can eat what you want as a reward for being disciplined for an extended period of time. If you set up your diet properly, you won't need to cheat on it with cheat days. If you are miserable, tweak the diet so that you are not miserable, but still abide by the healthy rules. Don't drink too much caffeine just some in the morning to kickstart your day if you need it). If you drink caffeine after 12pm, you will have trouble sleeping since the half-fe of caffeine is 9.5 hours.
Grazing: Grazing is the activity of eating small meals throughout the day (as a cow would do as the cow grazes). Grazing keeps your blood sugar at a constant level, which allows you to put in long hours or work without crashing. Don't smoke or use nicotine products. These products temporarily improve focus, but when you crash, you crash hard. It's better to just have a continual focus stream throughout the day. Also, smoking introduces toxins and your body will spend energy expelling them.
Sleep: Sleep is the most important thing to protect. You need sleep to recover and think clearly. Optimizing for 7-8 of really good sleep is imperative to function at a high-level. You do this by understanding how your body goes to sleep and tuning the machery. You want to dial in your sleep naturally. Don't eat before bed. Parasites are active at night time, so if you activate them before you go to sleep, you will have a disturbing sleep. Don't go to bed too hungry. Your body won't be able to rest since it knows it's missing something (it has bigger problems than not getting sleep). Sleep in a cool, dark room. 16 Degrees Celius. Completely blacked out with blackout blinds. The cold ambient temperature will keep you from moving around which will improve the quality of sleep. Have an extremely comfortable bed and extremely comfortable pillows. Invest into the best products you can find. Experiment with different sleep products to find what works for you. Make sure sheets are always clean. There are parasites in the sheets and if the toxins get into your body while you are sleeping, your immune system will try to fight them off which interrupts your sleep. You can set up a grounding pad underneath your bed to decrease the positive charge built up from the radiation during the day. Go to sleep at the same time every night and wake up at the same time every morning (even on weekends). It takes time and energy to adapt and you don't want to reset every weekend. Use a manual alarm clock (the less electronics you have in your room, the better). Keep your phone in an area outside your bedroom. Don't have a TV in your bedroom. Turn off wifi when you go to sleep. The energy of the electric field can disturb your sleep. Track your sleep using an Oura Ring. This will give you a sleep score every day. Once you start using it, you automatically start to optimize for good sleep.
Cleanliness and Being Tidy: You want to keep good hygiene because it will affect your energy levels. It also builds self-confidence. If you have a dirty environment, you will introduce more toxins into your body which slows you down. Having your space clean and tidy also helps your mind stay organized. An organized mind is a mind that is more productive. Remove unnecessary objects in your environment. Clutter forces your brain to make a decision to not use the object every time you look at it, which costs energy and focus. Make things easy on yourself by only having the necessities in your space. Keep your workplace tidy. You should have only a few objects on your desk: A mouse, a monitor, a pen, a notebook, and a water bottle. Keep a trash can beside your desk and constantly clean up your workspace. Keep your tabs clean on your computer. If you have tabs that you constantly use for demos, then use bookmarks. Have your clothing cleaned for you and laid out in a logical manner so you are not constantly looking for things. Get rid of unnecessary objects. Put objects into storage if you must. Don't have 2 sets of things. Just have one high-quality tool for the job. Remove objects in your space that may tempt you to distract you- example: Piano or guitar. Yes, those objects are fun to play with, however, they are costing you real dollars and output since you need to fight with your desire to play with them every time you look at them. Optimize your environment for work. Get a cleaning person 1-2 times per week to clean the bathrooms, do the laundry, deep clean the appliances. Give that person clear instructions with a spreadsheet so they are not guessing at what to do and placing objects in areas that will confuse you and cost you time looking for them.
Clothing: Invest in quality clothing. How you present affects how you feel and how you feel affects how you work. Get dress shirts, nice slacks, comfortable outfits. Avoid the designer stuff (it's a waste of money and not required to get results). Have only a few pairs of shoes, and replace them when they are wom. Don't be afraid to rebuild your wardrobe every couple years. When washing, use organic and non-scented chemicals. Some chemicals will linger on fabric & create stress on your system. A watch is a good asset to invest in. A good watch can help you build rapport at social events and it's an asset that appreciates in value and is generally liquid. Build up the watch collection as a hobby. When you wear a nice watch on sales calls, it can communicate status delta which will increase the close rate/influence rate.
Social: We are social creatures and we need friends and others to feel happiest. Don't isolate yourself. Pick a social day every week and do something fun. Be around people you enjoy. Do something social at the end of each day-call someone, go shoot the shit with someone, go for a walk, etc.. If you can optimize for output out of each day, you will optimize for each month, year, etc..
Partners: A good partner will make your life easier and help you hit your goals. A bad partner will detract from your life and slow you down. Choosing a partner is an important job. Who you partner with depends on what you are doing in your life. The partner you have while you are building up may be different than the partner that is best suited for when you are ready for a family. If you find the right partner, they would help you build up and then be great for a family. If you don't have a partner, don't take dating too seriously as you are building up. Dating and relationship maintenance takes a lot of energy and time. It's better to work for a few years, make lots of progress, then put the work into finding a partner when you have resources and time to do it properly. Also, if you are a male, you are more attractive when you have your skills and capital sorted. This will make the dating process a bit easier.
Exercise: You need muscle mass and cardiovascular health to function at a high level. Without muscle mass, you will feel weak and you won't have much courage (courage is essential for sales and marketing - you need to be able to take some heat and bullets). Without cardiovascular health, your stamina will go down, and you need your stamina to put in long hours while getting high output. Do 30-60 minutes of cardio every day. Skipping, biking, running (but not too much running). Lift heavy weights 3-4 times per week. Don't overdo it and try to be a bodybuilder - the larger the body, the less blood and oxygen gets to the brain, the less thinking you can do. Do cardio that you enjoy. For example, I enjoy boxing, playing hockey and playing squash. Find a partner to make this activity more fun. Take rest days. Typically on Saturday or Sunday, you take a full rest day. Don't work, don't exercise, just spend time with people you enjoy or do a fun activity that you enjoy.
Meditation: Meditation is useful since it clears your mind of crap and allows your body to get into deep focus. I meditate when I stretch and foam roll. You eliminate a lot of negative energy when you meditate. This improves focus and energy throughout the day.
Napping: If you are extremely tired and you are unable to focus, it's because you are sleep-deprived or dehydrated. Get some water in you and take a 21 minute nap to recharge. Time your nap.
Friends: "Show me your friends, and I'll show you your future." You want to include friends in your social circle who are on the up. Remove negative friends and negative people in your environment. This could be difficult and create some backlash from friends who are not on the up. However, when you start making massive strides, you will understand that controlling your friend group was required. If you want to make new friends, join mastermind groups, join clubs, and try to contribute as much as you can. This is not a suggestion, this is a prescription. The people with whom you surround yourself WILL determine your output.
Bloodwork: Get your bloodwork done every couple months and get monitored for health things. You will take on a lot of stress, so it's important to monitor things closely and catch things before they develop into more serious elements if they were to develop. Get yourself a good doctor who you can be open with and can help you monitor your results. You could do irreversible damage to your body if you are not careful. All the money in the world is useless if you don't have your health. When you are working hard, you could damage your brain, your kidneys, your heart, and other organs. Make sure you are on top of it.
Avoiding Chaos and Social Media: Chaos is the enemy of focus. You want to keep your life controlled and the best way to do this is to subtract rather than add. Don't watch the news (it's designed to create chaos). Don't browse aimlessly on social media. Don't watch TV or movies (someone else is pushing ideas into your head that may or may not be productive). Don't spend your time on Twitter or Instagram or watching YouTube videos. The platforms are biased and they will show you what they think you ought to see, not what you want to learn or see. When you spend too much time on these platforms, you start to compare yourself to others and you may feel frustrated or angry. Keep in mind that it's "media" and it's not necessarily real. Obsessing about what others are doing on social media will just cost you. It's better to be a producer on social media than a consumer.
Avoid Lifestyle Creep: As you start doing well, you may be tempted to improve your standard of living by getting a new car, or buying a new house, or traveling. This is all fine, but keep in mind that it's very difficult to go back once you go forward in this dimension. If your lifestyle gets too extravagant, you will be forced to keep it up by doing things that may not be right for you long term. Experiment as you should, however, be aware of the costs. Managing more things takes focus which will subtract from the focus needed to be high-performance at work. You should invest in a good place to live, a car that you feel comfortable and safe in, and nice equipment and furniture since you are around it all day and the environment determines your output.
Religion and Family: Religion can be very useful. You should strive to be a contributor. Donate when you can afford to do so and give back when you feel like you are being blessed. Spend time with your family as well (once or twice a month), but don't overdo it. You have stuff you need to do and hanging with family before you hit your goal can be costly. Keep your family in the loop and tell them that you may be AWAY for a few months as you are focused and building.
Outsource Life Maintenance: The more time you spend simply maintaining your life, the less time and energy you can spend building or selling and making progress in work. When you can afford it, start hiring people to help you with tasks like shopping, meal prep, laundry, cleaning, etc.. You may need to experiment with a few people to find the right fit. If something feels off with a person, just let them go asap and get another one. If you can afford to, hire an agency to help you find a maid (they are screened and this increases the odds of you finding a good fit). Examples:
Get a cleaner
Get a driver
Get a handyman to assemble things
Meal service to provide you with meals
Order using Amazon for most things to avoid going to stores
Buy toiletries and other things in bulk so you are not constantly reordering
Create a checklist so when you install a helper, they can take care of things for you without oversight.
Prepare on Sundays. Prep meals and store in the freezer. Eat the same thing every day at the same time.
Wear the same thing everyday. A white dress shirt, slacks.
Get the haircut at the same place or have the barber come to you.
No commuting if possible. Keep commutes short.
Have your fridge stocked with water and basic supplies at all times. When things get to a low-level, have someone replenish them. Account for this rule using a checklist.
Have someone run errands for you (Tasker is a good service)
Helping the customer is the most important thing. That's it. Approaching your sales call with the mindset of actually helping the customer is extremely powerful. It sounds obvious, but sometimes this simple fact is forgotten by salespeople. If you get caught up in the hard-charging-closing, or commission-grabbing and forget about the whole reason the business exists (to help people), the customer will feel it and they will be less likely to engage and buy from you. If you are truly trying to help the customer, your tonality and language will be perfect. The customer can feel it and you will fall into deep rapport. At the end of the day, you are exchanging goods and services that help the customer for money. If the value of the goods and services are greater than the cost, then the customer should buy. As a salesperson, you are simply communicating this. If your goods and services don't actually help the customer, then hold your horses and go fix your offer. The more calls you make, the better you get. Your skill level is a function of the number of calls and your training intensity. You will need to do at least 1000 calls to become proficient. Your first 30-50 calls will be bad. Just get through them. You will start to hit your stride after 100 calls. You will also need to review your calls every night. Focus on the inputs, not the outputs. Don't worry about your monthly numbers; worry about the number of dials and intensity of the demos. If you do more calls and more demos, you will close more sales. Your close rate will start to converge to 30-45%. In the beginning it will be 7-15%. The ramp period can take 3-4 months. If you are ever stuck in a slump, don't throw yourself a pity party; just get back in the cockpit and do more prospecting calls or closing calls. Every sale is the same. Once you learn the process, you will just repeat yourself thousands of times and make millions of dollars. Master the fundamentals first. Focus on mastering the perfect sale. You need to flip certain switches to close a prospect. After going through this training, you will understand the switches and learn how to trigger them in a prospect every time.
Operate Broke (Hide money in an account that you cannot touch. Recall you are a hamster just flailing around in the wind. Even if you have lots, get it out of sight)
Always Be Marketing (In general, if you don't know what you should be doing, you should be marketing. The business is a machine that turns leads into cash. If you have free time, market. If you have an extra 20 minutes as you are waiting to get your license renewed, market. Send some emails. Do some posts. Before you go to bed, do some follow ups and do some prospecting. 7pm on a Friday, do some follow ups and do some marketing. Never stop marketing. Never. Ever)
Set Up Marketing Engines To Force Yourself Into A Chair (It is against human nature to want to do 6 appointments per day 5-6 days per week. If you set up the marketing on your own, you will eventually stop prospecting to limit the amount of pain you take. For this reason, it's important to set up the marketing flywheel to staple yourself to the chair and force you to take appointments. As a salesperson, you want to leverage further by writing sales letters and driving traffic to them with ads or other forms of marketing. Alternatively, you can install a commission-only remote prospecting team to staple yourself to a calendar. If you can solve the marketing flywheel, you will be extremely successful since you have so many at-bats).
Avoid Shiny Objects and Business Opportunities, Investing. There are a million and one business opportunities and ideas that can be pursued, however, the question is should they be pursued? When you constantly interrupt your current activities with new ones, you end up not making progress in what you are doing. To make significant progress in anything, you need to spend a long time in a single direction without distraction. Even if others are doing well in the space, doesn't mean you should drop everything and pursue what others are doing. In fact, typically if others know about it, then it's already too late. If others know about bc, it's too late. If others know about some business opportunity, it's too late. Investing: You can learn the principles of investing by reading some good books like Ben Graham, however, to actually get good at investing, you need to spend time doing it and learning. This is a full time job. Furthermore, the skills and habits required to get good at investing are at odds with the skills and habits required to make the capital in the first place: Investing requires you to be a data ingestion monster, constantly seeking out information that no one else has. It requires you to think deeply about things. It requires you to be social to learn about opportunities before anyone on the internet even knows of them. Building up capital requires you to be tunnel-visioned, to limit the amount of information you put in your brain. To limit the amount of risk and exposure you have so you can pursue one direction with vigor and violence.If you try to invest and build up capital, you will fail at both, unless you are an analyst at an investment fund and you are getting paid to do the analyst work.There is a time and a place to learn about investing and it's when the cost of not learning about it outweighs the cost of leaming about it. This point typically comes along at $3m-$5m in after tax capital. If you don't have that amount of capital, it's best to focus on building up your capital first and completely shut off any noise with respect to investing. You could also hire someone extremely trusted to manage your finances for you, however, this is a hard task as well. Out of the people who manage money, there are only a few good ones and millions of bad ones. The good ones either manage their own money, or manage billionaire or Oligarch funds, so even if you found one, you are probably not qualified to work with any of them. So don't try to be Warren Buffet until you have some mills. In fact, Warren started in sales, then got into an insurance business, then was forced to be an investor because he was pumping out so much cash from his insurance business. He didn't start out being "Warren Buffet The Investor."
Protect Your Attention: Lot of people will be after your attention. Money flows where attention goes. Do your deep work in the mornings. Don't have your phone around you when you are working. Tum off your phone. Put it in a cookie jar.
Paying Tax and Accounting: Keep organized and keep your accounting and banking as simple as possible. Have only one checking account, one saving account, one credit account. Track your expenses with something like Quickbooks and don't buy things that are questionable in the eyes of the tax authorities. Doing gymnastics with respect to tax efficiency before you are making more than $10m per year is detrimental since the costs don't outweigh the benefits. Furthermore, your country needs taxes to keep the water clean and the military strong. Without clean water and military, you will be annexed andput in a slave work camp. Pay your tax.
Stretching, Foam Rolling, Sauna, Theragun: As you are working and exercising, toxins like metals and acids build up in your system. To break these up and expel them, you need to stretch and foam roll. Have a foam roller by your desk. You can also buy a Theragun and use it daily. This works wonders and relieves stress. You can also mix in a massage once or twice a week if your budget affords you to do so. If you have access to a sauna, utilize it for 30 minutes a day. The sauna allows you to sweat out the toxins that are hard on your system. If you have access to a cold tub, do a cold tub or cold shower after a workout and sauna. This will flush out your system by making you breathe heavily to warm up your body. A theragun is very useful as a tool to relieve tension as you are working. Have one beside your desk and use it in-between sales calls or follow-up calls. It will help you stay relaxed.
Goal Setting And Direction Setting: When you do sales and marketing, you don't want to simply just "do sales and marketing." You want to crush it and you want to be the best in the world. This mindset is required to make a big difference in the numbers. Prospecting and Sales is the most important thing you can do in a business and if you get good at it, you will pull a business and create profit for everyone. When you set your goals and direction properly, and you remind yourself of the goals every day, multiple times a day, you will program your brain subconsciously to achieve those goals. Your brain will not stop optimizing for those goals.
Income Goals: Goals are pretty easy to set in sales. Just pick a sales number and an income number and attach a timeframe on it. Don't pick a goal that is too far out because doing so could be discouraging. Pick something that is within range. Hit it, then hit your next goal. Have a trophy case of completed goals. Confidence is the memory of success. When you start hitting your goals and building momentum, you will feel great. Write your goals down on a sticky note and attach them to your monitor so they are in front of you every day all day. You will look at them multiple times a day and burn them into your brain. When you complete the goal, put the sticky note on the other side of the monitor to remind yourself that you completed the goal and that you are capable of completing goals. Over time, this will build up your self-confidence.
Focus On Cash In: Prospecting is not selling. Selling is not closing. Closing is not getting cash. The superstar gets the cash. This means they need to align their north star to cash. Cash today is worth more than cash in the future. Focus on prospects where the cash comes in. Despise payment plans, despise IOUS or promises to pay "next week." Despise wishy washy behavior from customers. You got the goods. Prospects have the money. Make the trade and get on with it.
Every Word Matters: If you want to be a superstar, you need to treat the script sacredly. Every word matters. It's like reading music. The notes and the timing needs to be perfect, and then you can focus on making the instrument sound good and playing.
Never Not Use The Script: Sometimes you will be tempted to go off script because you feel like "you got the hang of it. Don't do this. You are relying on intuition and feel, which is risky. If you are not in perfect state, if you eat something that messes with your memory, if you don't have enough water in you, or you didn't get enough sleep, or their is a dog barking outside, or a bird chirping, you will wander off script and blow the deal when you otherwise wouldn't have if you were using the script. You are a robot that executes the script. You treat it like a sport. Like shooting a 3-pointer. Every shot is the same. Yes, you have different positions from where you start the shot, but the hand movements and the body movements are generally similar-you are just calibrating based on position. Same thing with the script. The words and the arguments are the same, you are just calibrating based on how much time you have and how the prospect responds, and how much the prospect knows beforehand and where they are in the buying journey.
How To Practice And Train On The Script: When you are starting a new offer, write the script that is based off the sales letter. If there is already a script in place, learn it and adjust it based on this framework. Once you have the script, you need to burn it into your brain by writing it down on paper 10-15 times. A massive document that you manually write out. This will take you some time. Then you practice reading it over and over again until you create the neural pathways required for it to sound natural. It will sound unnatural at the beginning and you will feel like the exercise is pointless and that you are winging it will do much better. This is wrong. Just practice until it comes off perfectly. Practice one part of the script at a time and practice until you can't get it wrong, not just getting it right once. Once you master a part of the script, then move down the script and master another part. Eventually you will master the entire script. Practicing Looping The sale doesn't start until you make the first loop or the first objection. This is where you earn the money. When you are looping and closing, you can't hesitate, stutter or show any sign of uncertainty. There is little margin for error. If the prospect picks up that you are not completely certain, they will get spooked and you will blow the sale or create a ton of more work for you to change the prospect down and make the stars align again. Practice looping until it comes off completely natural. Play around with timing and pacing and tonality until you can hypnotize the prospect with your language. Practice looping with a partner every morning to get the engines firing for the day ahead.
Updating The Technical Questions: You want to be an expert with respect to your solution and to be this, you need technical and product knowledge. If a prospect has a technical question, you need to be able to answer it quickly and without hesitation and uncertainty. If there is a technical question that comes up and you don't yet know the answer, write the question in the script and charge someone to help you answer it. Then take that answer and write it in a way that is persuasive.
Be The Customer You Want To Attract: Pay your bills on time. Be cool. Don't be wishy washy. Don't steal from businesses. Just don't do things you wouldn't want your customers to do. Be a class act
Watch What You Say: Everything is recorded. Apologize if you said something wrong or bad to a prospect. Don't leave a customer feeling bad. Don't talk about sensitive subjects like religion, racism, abortions, etc.. (pretty obvious stuff).
Always Be Courteous and Polite: Manners go a long way. Manners are the lubricant in business. Even if you are being critical of someone's behavior, do so politely. If you are a hot head or "ghetto," learn manners. Always use manners in your messages, even if you are dealing with an angry customer or "complaining customer." This is business, not everything is always going to be perfect always. When things go wrong, solve the problem and always pay respect. If you are tired, don't get negative or have poor manners.
Never End An Interaction In A Negative Way: You can get passionate, take some risks (once you are calibrated) but never end an engagement in a negative way. If you do, people will run around telling everyone they know how bad you are and how bad your business is which will hurt everyone (including yourself) in the short and long term. If you jar someone, IMMEDIATELY apologize for stepping over the line and reconcile. Remember, give more than you take.
Go All In-Focus and Be Obsessed: If you are going to do something, go at it and go all in. You have a window where you can get really good offers. If you get distracted, you could derail yourself and you won't ever come back because to get good at selling an offer, you need the compounding effect and momentum. The longer you can stay in the pocket and focus on a single offer, the more money you can make. You only need a single offer to get rich and to get rich, you need to stick with a single offer for 2-3 years. Don't have side hustles, don't have other businesses you start, don't have other hobbles (like playing the piano) or playing sports or doing arts and crafts. Be 100% focused on the single offer and becoming a machine at selling that offer. When you fully jump into something and "bum the boats" your brain changes into a different mode - it must work. Play with this mechanism. Bum the boats and force yourself to make it work. A really good salesperson operates like each day is life or death. Always day 1. The stakes are always very high. If you need to completely move cities to burn the boats, do it. If you need to break up with your partner, do it. If you need to throw out all of your materials or sell your car, do it. Again, you only need 2-3 years to completely change your life with one offer, so the benefits justify the costs.
Protect Your Golden Hours and Attention: You have the most willpower in the morning. Eat your frogs in the morning (prospecting in the morning). Wake up and within 12 minutes you are working. Don't check your phone in the morning. Don't check social media. Don't do anything when you have Golden hours. Don't answer the door, answer the phone unless it's work related. Don't jump on Slack and shoot the shit with other people for no reason. Stay focused. You typically have 4-5 hours of pure work you can do before you start to get exhausted and you get diminishing returns on your labor. Treat those 4-5 hours as a scarce resource because that's exactly what it is. There are certain times when prospects are more likely to answer the phone and make decisions. This time is somewhat different based on the market. Once you find the sweet spot, make sure you are working full force and you hit the accelerator during this time to maximize the results.
Speed and Prioritizing Things: Because you work on performance and commission, you need to be able to prioritize activities properly and execute with speed. Speed is key. When you need to send a follow up, send it right away. If you need to make a phone call, call right away. The difference between a superstar & average is the speed at which they execute and rigor they use when executing. If you need to order groceries online, quickly order them. If you need to book an appointment, book it as quickly as you can. If you need to drive somewhere, have someone pick you up so you can do money making tasks in the car.
Know Your Numbers and Optimize: As you are selling, you will get to know the numbers associated with your job. How many touch-points does it take to get to a meeting? How many meetings does it take to get a deal? How many phone calls must you place to get a deal? Once you understand the numbers, you can treat your job like a video game. For example, let's say your average commission on a deal is $1k and you have a 20% closing rate on meetings that show up. That means that for each meeting that shows up, you make $200 ($1k.2). So if you can get someone on a meeting, you make $200! If you get 5 people to show up per day, you make $1k per day. So you can optimize for that. Knowing this, you will start to optimize for the show up rate by sending more and better communications between the lead and demo stage. You will also prospect more and focus on getting appointments on the calendar. For outbound prospecting or end to end sales, let's assume that for every 100 outreaches we do, we get 4 meetings that show up. If each meeting that shows up is worth $200, and we get 4 meetings per every 100 emails, then for every 100 outreaches, we make $800, which means that each outreach is worth $8. So if each outreach is worth $8, and you can send 100 per day, you can make $800 per day. But what about if you could double that and send 200 per day? That means that you could make $1600 per day. Or what if you could triple that? You could make $2400 per day. What if you could get someone to send 100 outreaches as you would send them and you would only have to pay them $200 per day. That means that you would profit $600 per day on someone else's work. You get it? Find the metric that matters the most (it's most likely the top of the funnel metric-touch-points). Once you find that metric, laser focus on it and push it for 2-3 years straight! When you wake up in 2-3 years, you will be rich.
Deprive Yourself Of Things and Have Discipline: Perhaps one of your goals is to make a ton of money so you can buy a fancy car and ball out in the club. Or perhaps you want to travel to a foreign land with some instagram model. Or you want to buy a house or start investing in the market. These are all nobel things to pursue, however, you must understand that the gains come from pursuing a single direction with a single offer and being dialed in for 2-3 years straight. That means when you start getting success, when you get your first big commission check, do not justle your environment. Do not get tempted by the satans. You need to stay in the pocket and execute. Don't go on the date, don't go to the family function that will force you to travel for 3-4 hours and mess up your momentum. This is all very hard, but believe me, it's worth it. Once you clear the capital hurdle and you put it all on the line and you get to the point where you literally cannot sell any more because your health prohibits you, then it's time to take a break, recover, and do some of the family stuff.
Prioritize The Customers With A Lot Of Money: When you first start a sales job, you may not fully understand the market and the customers who are the highest value. Once you start selling a bit, you will understand what customers are the most valuable and you will start to prioritize the most profitable customers. To do this, you want to understand the price the customer pays, the commission you get, and the time it takes to close the deal (sales cycle length). You also need to understand the time it takes to get a meeting or the time to market. Rank the customers using this formula: Profit/customer/time = Commission/(time to sell + time to market). Example: Profit/customer/time = $2,000/(7 days + 3 days) = $2000/(10 days) = $200/day. This means that pursuing a customer with $2000 commission a 7 day sales cycle and a 3 day time to generate a lead equates to $200/day. If you can pursue 5 at a time, then you earn $1000 per day. Compare this to a different customer: Profit/customer/time = $10,000/(30 days + 7 days) = $10,000/(37 days) = $270/day. This means that pursuing a customer with $10,000 commission with a 30 day sales cycle and 7 day time to generate a lead equates to $270/day. If you can pursue 5 at a time, then you make $1,350 per day. You will only start to understand these numbers as you are selling. You can go into the CRM and determine the sales cycle length by taking the difference between the demo date and the close date. You can determine the marketing time by looking at the time difference between the first contact and the demo date. You also want to plot these points in a spreadsheet and get the average numbers (you can't just take 1 or 2 data points).
Journal Every Night. This keeps you accountable and you will be able to compress the day's events and synthesize new ones as you sleep or "come to realize" as you are sleeping. Always have your overarching goals in your journal. Write down what you learned. Write your goals. Review other pages. Plan tomorrow's events the night before. Don't read anything not sales related before bed. Don't be watching movies or tv shows or listening to music before you sell. You need to be careful with what you put in your head. If you put the wrong information in your head, you sabotage your results.
There Are No Spare Customers: As you start getting good at sales and your pipeline gets filled, you will feel like you can start taking your foot off the gas. Maybe you run a few minutes behind. Maybe you take an extra 20 minutes for lunch. Maybe you start going out to party again because you are crushing it. Maybe you decide to not do your follow ups. This will mess you up. You may not feel the effects of the slacking immediately, but in 2-3 months, your whole life will fall apart. There are no spare customers and there are no spare leads. Remember this. The second you start taking a customer or lead for granted is the second you sign your death certificate. If your CRM is unorganized, get it organized because there are no spare leads. Being unorganized is no excuse for missing a phone call or missing an appointment or opportunity to follow up.
Embrace The Resistance: Sales is not a natural activity. It requires a ton of mental toughness. You can't "IQ" your way to being a successful salesperson, you need to have courage and you need an ability to take damage (this is why health is so important - if you don't have health, you can't take damage, and you can't do your sales job very well). When you are selling and prospecting, you are getting rejected many times per day. Rejection doesn't feel good since we are wired against doing activities that leave us ostracized from society. We interpret being ostracized as being more painful than losing an arm or leg. When we were living in small tribes thousands of years ago, being ostracized essentially meant death since we depended on our tribe for sustenance. We can't get around this feeling of ostracization since we can't very easily rewire our instincts, so we must learn how to deal with it.Damage: There is no easy way to make money. You either need to take on massive risk, or be exceptionally good at something, or do something that others are unwilling or incapable of doing. Doing these things requires you to take damage. Every sales call, you will take some damage. Every prospecting email or every cold call, you will take some damage. Damage is required, however, you want to take smart damage, and not dumb damage. Smart damage is damage that leads to exponential results. Sales and marketing is smart damage because it builds capital and skills that you can leverage further in the future to build more capital and skills. Dumb damage is damage you take without getting exponential returns. For example: working a minimum wage job is dumb damage if you are just spending what you are earning. Doing excess partying is taking dumb damage since you are hindering you ability to produce in the future. Doing crime and not paying taxes is taking dumb damage. Lying on the sales call is taking dumb damage. The younger you are, the more damage you can take and the more risk you can take. You want to take advantage of your health and your lack of responsibilities if you are young to take as much smart damage as you can so that you set yourself up properly in the future. Keep this in mind as you are selling. It should be hard. It should feel like you are taking damage. It should feel like you are pushing and it should feel like it's unnatural. Having courage and health is the way to combat this. A lot of the emotional damage comes from minding what others think of you. Managing your reputation is rational, however, to make big capital leaps and big strides, you can't be bogged down by minding what others think of you - it's too costly. You need to be willing to give up your reputation to make the leap. This is the true damage. You need to be able to stomach having your family members question you and disapprove, you need to be able to have your friends mock you behind your back or to your face or on the internet. You need to be able to take a little heat on social media, or lose a girlfriend. This is all par for the course. If you are unable to stomach these things, then being a superstar salesperson may not be for you. No one really wants you to be wildly successful, at least not more successful than them. When others see you taking risks and selling or marketing your face off, they will feel threatened because deep down they know that those activities lead to massive gains. They will try to pull you down at every chance they get. Don't worry about this. The rewards are worth the costs. Eventually you will work so hard and take on so much risk that you start to not care. You know that others can't do what you did and eventually any comment doesn't bother you much because you have so much self confidence from actually going out in the world and getting what you want. As you are getting to that point, you will need to trust the process and be somewhat delusional (another reason why protecting your delicate environment is so important). Keep in mind that there is no shame in prospecting and there is no shame in selling. Someone needs to do it. Might as well be you.
Follow Up Like A Psycho and Embrace Interrupting People: To get the exponential results with sales and marketing, you need to behave like a psycho. You need to send the follow-ups like a psycho. You need to send the outbound messaging like a psycho. You need to push and loop hard when the prospects give you resistance. Prospects will often think or explicitly say "What the hell is wrong with this guy?". This is normal. You are pushing hard to get what you want. They envy you for being a force in the world and having the courage to go after what you want. When you are prospecting and marketing, you are interrupting people. People do not like being interrupted. You need to become expert at interrupting and getting attention, then handling the attention when it comes your way. If you are not interrupting people, you are not doing your job. Take the interrupt seriously.
There is Always A Way To Find A Channel and Win: There is always a way to get attention and win in a channel, it just takes time and energy to learn. This is why you need to focus and focus on one customer segment at a time. The key resource you have is attention and you need to spend it wisely on one channel. Pick a channel and dominate it. The best channels are the paid channels that can scale quickly. There is always a way to win with a channel. You just need to find the right message and tactic required to make that channel work. Rapid testing and proper tracking is required to get the results.
Take Complete and Utter Responsibility For Outcomes: Whatever income you are making, whatever outcome is being achieved, (good or bad) is your responsibility. Everything is your fault. Two choices: complain, or fix it and be positive. Most people use drugs and alcohol to escape the pain of their circumstances. Don't do that. Experience the pain, and fix the problem with disciplined work.
Never Take The First Back-step: Do not take "no" for an answer. Inner mindset is relentless. Play offense, not goalie. Always march. The best defense is a good offense. When you are looping, the prospect may try to sell you on why they are not moving forward today, or why they can't afford it right now, or why it's not the right time, or blah blah blah. Never retreat or take the first back step. You need tis aggression to get exceptional results in sales.
Use One More Door: When you think you are done for the day, do ONE MORE CALL. When you strive for 100 outreaches a day, do 101. When you do 50 follow-ups, do 51. Then, after that do 52. The gains come from hitting ONE MORE DOOR. It's the difference between a good salesperson and a superstar. The superstar does ONE MORE REP. Then after that ONE MORE. Always have the ONE MORE mindset. This compounds over time and eventually you will be in a league of your own. Treat it like a video game. Just do one more. Even if it's 7pm on a Friday night, hit one more follow up. This will show the prospect that you are serious and you want the business. People like doing business with winners.
Don't Tell People What You Are Going To Do, Just Do It: If you are working on something or training for something, don't tell people what you are doing. Telling people will release dopamine and prevent you from doing the actual thing you are telling people you are doing! Keep it to yourself, and push results.
Expect Hate And Negativity: If you do sales and especially leveraged sales properly, you will get some backlash on the internet. This is normal. People will light you up on Reddit, on Linkedin, on blogs. Fake negative reviews. People are terribly threatened by someone who is really bold and not scared to push their ideas forward with zeal. Only care about the feedback from customers. Don't worry about the trolls. You will need thick skin to make it far as a superstar and you may have to take a few bullets. Don't let them affect you and keep going.
Just Show Up No Matter What: Most of getting results is just consistently showing up. If you show up every day for a long enough time period, eventually you will master whatever you are doing. Having intensity while you work is important, however, you need to couple that intensity with consistency. If you have both, you will tear down buildings and create magic. Design systems that allow you to show up. You don't want to constantly be deciding to show up, you want to plop yourself into an environment where you have no choice. Example: hire a helper that shows up at your door every day at 830 and pay them hourly. This will force you to work since you don't want to let your helper down and you are paying them so your own money is on the line. Before you go to bed, line up water and supplies for work for the following day. When you wake up, you just roll out of bed and get on the conveyor belt and get to work. You don't want to think, you just want to do. This will allow you to work when you are not motivated. True masters and pros work when they are not motivated. It's easy to get motivated for a short period of time, however, the pros are discipline. There is a difference. If you are disciplined, you work even when you hate it. Even when you feel like you are failing, you work and are consistent. Eventually, your discipline will carry you and you won't need motivation for anything.
Manage Ego - The Fall From Grace & Rise: As you get some success, you will likely start to feel more confident and your ego can creep up and start to delude you. Don't confuse the results that you get today with the activities that you did today. Often success is a result of work you did 6 months to 2 years ago.
If you slack for a few moments, or break momentum, you could derail yourself. Getting back on the rails is a tremendous amount of work. It's extremely painful when you fall off. It is best to avoid this completely by staying humble and staying on track. Use mentors to help you through your journey since they can save you a ton of time and pain. As you get more successful, you will start having more options. People who "want to help" will come out of the woodwork. New friends will show up. You will have access to better events and you will meet new types of people. Don't get too distracted and recognize that pursuing some of the new options could be fatal. In general, it's best to not have an ego. You will have ups, and you will have downs. Get your dopamine from the activity of working and making progress, not the result itself. This way, you will stay grounded and you will enjoy the process at whatever stage.
Move The Needle: There are people who move the needle and those who maintain the needle. Then there are those who are the needle. You want to be either the person who moves the needle or who is the needle. This means that when you put in the work, you make magic & you create results wherever you may be.
Believe In Yourself and Depend On Yourself: Before anyone else believes in you, you must believe in yourself. You have all the answers all of the time, however, you should stop at nothing to find the answers and be useful. In order to depend on yourself, you need to build up routines and discipline. Trust in your routines and discipline to get you through any situation.
How You Do One Thing Is How You Do All Things: Everything you do must be done to the best of your ability. How you do one thing is how you do all things. If you slack in one area of your life, or you put in less-than type of work, then that could corrupt other parts of your life and other work you do. Keep everything congruent. As things get more complex and bigger (for example when you are managing a team), you still want to operate with your core principles. Your core principles will guide you through uncertain terrain and keep you producing when there is temporary chaos.
Make Things Happen. Shaper: There is always a path. There is always a way. Keep positive, solve the problem. If you don't know how to scrape leads using a new tool, figure it out. If you run out of leads, figure out how to get more leads. If your message isn't working, figure it out. If your domain isn't working or you are going to spam, figure it out asap. Elon wanted to go to space and started reading rocket books (apparently). He knew that he just needed to study and apply. Don't take "this can't be done" as an answer. If something must be done, then do it. Find a way, back yourself into a corner and watch what your body does. Set audacious deadlines, big goals, stress yourself out and find your own limit. You will likely be surprised at what you can achieve. Ask questions in the group, but try to find an answer before you ask. Google is a powerful tool.
Staying Technical: Staying abreast of sales and marketing tactics is key, however, in today's world, it's not enough. You also need to stay abreast of the technical aspects of the machine. This means that you want to invest in learning some of the technical skills either through books, online courses, or mentors. If you have the marketing chops and the technical chops, you will do extremely well in any situation.
Have Your Numbers In Front Of You: When you have your numbers in front of you, you are forced to course-correct. Get your daily cashflow and monthly cash flow statement sent to you each morning.
Scheduling Time To Wind Down: This is a high-intensity job and making millions is hard. You will need to schedule time to wind down and be social. Typically, wind down a few hours before bed, don't eat during that time and do your reflecting and journaling. Have a Sunday where you do nothing and just rest.
Stop Watching News That Has Nothing To Do With Your Job: News will mess with you. It's designed to get views and stimulate emotions. It's better just to focus on your customer and help them. Eventually you will make the news. Who cares if you are right, left, middle, black, white, asian, indian. The market does not give a shit. The market cares about getting their problem solved. The market doesn't care if the cat is black or white, it cares if it catches mice.
Post Numbers In The Morning: Post your numbers in a common slack channel in the morning. This way, numbers are public. If you don't continually look at your numbers, you will drift. Tell your friends your numbers every day.
Make Sure To Get Slapped At Least Once A Day: If you are not getting slapped around, you are not taking enough touch-points and not building enough pipelines. Always be marketing.
Follow Up in The Morning: Hit your most qualified prospects in the morning with a follow-up. Follow up like a fucking champion. Hit your follow-ups with zeal out of the gate. Hit the dials.
Schedule Time To Review Goals and Visualize: This is best done on Saturday or Sunday when you are taking your rest day. When you are calm, visualize and imagine you being successful. This is a subconscious thing that works extremely well. Have a vision board. The subconscious mind is extremely powerful. All you need to do is set the direction, don't impair it, and let it rip. Reflection is key here, too. Schedule time to compare where you are to where you want to be. Observe the contrast. This will subconsciously program your brain to make the right decisions.
Schedule Time To Review Calls and Update Discovery Script and Sales Script: Do rapid updates. Schedule time in the morning to update your understanding of the prospect and adapt your script and messaging. Reviewing notes from the previous day are useful for when you are updating the script since the information is fresh. Adapt your script. Most times, you are adapting it in real time. If you do this every day, you will get exponentially better over time. Rapid updates and tweaks are powerful. I did this when I was going door to door - I would review script and rewrite in the morning on the way to the location.
Schedule Time To Clean Up CRM, Reorganize, Sharpen Sword: The more organized you are in the CRM, the better able you are to increase the volume and quality of your prospecting. The best prospectors are the most organized. Being organized allows you to be on the ball. A dirty CRM list or an unorganized list can cause havoc and confusion so that results plummet. Schedule a 10-15 minute block each day to make sure the CRM data is accurate. Meaning that your lead status is marked properly, your opportunity statuses are marked properly, and your inbox is not clogged. If your CRM is dirty, spend a full work day organizing it (on a Saturday or Sunday). This is preparation. On your off days, you want to read books and play with new tools so that you can implement them in your workflow during the week.
Record All Calls and Watch Them Back At Least Once Per Day
Schedule Social Time: We are social animals. Our limbic system requires us to spend time with other people or animals. If you go too long without doing social activities, your relationships will completely break (not just stress), and your production will decrease. Schedule something fun for Saturday night (without drinking a lot). Religious stuff on Saturday or Sunday is also extremely healthy.
Prepare Prospecting Lists The Night Before You Work: For cold prospecting, you will be scraping leads and cleaning leads. The quality of the data is important, and when you are in the Golden Hours, you don't want to be cleaning each email during the day. Prepare the lists the night before you work. This doesn't require a lot of thought-power. it's mostly waiting for machines to finish their jobs and exporting data.
Start Working 12 minutes After You Wake Up: Jump right into work. Get coffee or pre-workout. You don't need a long warm up to get working. Use your best energy in the morning. Don't watch news or go on social media before you start working.
Warm Up With Scripts Every Morning: Before you start pitching for the day, get the jets warmed up by doing "script wars" with a partner or on a Zoom call with your team. Run through the back half of the script and objections and questions to prepare for the day ahead. It's like playing the piano: if you don't practice for one day, you lose your skill. If you don't practice looping or selling for one day, you lose the skill. Stay disciplined and make sure you commit to doing this every morning.
Pre-Sales
A1: Acknowledge the prospect
When the sales call is booked, send over an itinerary. This shows that you are prepared and that you will respect the prospect's time on the call. Include in the itinerary email the link to the sales letter and thesis.
Confirmation Template:
"Hi James,
I'm looking forward to chatting (date and time).
Here is a link to the thesis for review before the call: (insert thesis link)
Going through this will allow us to get the most out of the call.
Speak soon.
(your name)"
A2: Confirm The Meeting The Morning of The Call
People get busy and need reminders to join the call. Sending a reminder also signals that you are on the ball and that you organized, which builds rapport. Reminder Template:
"Hi (first_name).
Just sending you a confirmation email this morning to remind you of the call today at (time).
Please just make sure that all decision-makers are present! Also, join on a computer if possible.
Here is a link to join: (insert link)
Here is a link to the thesis: (insert sales letter/thesis link).
Thanks. Speak soon.
(your name)
If the prospect cancels, don't get phased. Just reschedule and send a reschedule email and update the CRM to demo no show. Reschedule Email Template:
"Hi ((contact.first_name)).
We had a demo booked, but I guess we weren't able to connect.
Are you still interested in booking a call?
Here is the link to reschedule: (link to reschedule).
Kind Regards,
(your name)"
A3: Send Reminder 10 Minutes Before The Call
This can be done with your scheduling tool. You can set it to send a reminder 10 minutes or 30 minutes before the call. The notification reads:
"This is a friendly reminder for your upcoming appointment at (time).
Please use this link to join the call: (Insert Link)
B1: Start Introduction and Get Control Of The Frame
The first few moments of the sales call are extremely important; it sets the pace of following interactions and it also sets the frame. If you mess up the first few moments of the sales calls, it's difficult to recover and you will find it difficult to close. You want to immediately establish yourself as an expert and get control of the interaction (establish the status delta as quickly as possible). You want the prospect to sit back and think, "Wow, I'm in the presence of a real expert, here. Finally!". Show up to the call a few minutes before the set time. Use the waiting room feature if you are using Zoom and admit the person into the room right on time. Don't admit the prospect early. You want to set the tone that the trains run on schedule at your company. If you are running a few minutes behind, send the prospect an email 5-10 minutes before the call and let them know that you are running behind out of courtesy. They will appreciate this and likely understand. Let the prospect know that you are recording this call so that you can send them and their team members the recording. If they decline to be recorded, shut off the recording. Turn on the camera and introduce yourself. Wear a dress shirt and clean shave (if male). This shows the prospect that you respect them enough to look presentable. This increases trust and rapport. Make sure the lighting is flattering. No dark, weird places. Make sure it's quiet and no one is walking around in the background. You can quickly ask the prospect where they are from and look for some common ground, but don't get too off track. The prospect must understand that your time is valuable and you are there to solve a problem for them. If you get too off track at the beginning of the call, the prospect thinks the interaction is too friendly (friend zone) and it will be harder to get commitment on the phone. People don't buy from friends, they buy from people who can solve their problems and present themselves as experts. B1 Script:
Hi (name), how are you doing today?
Great. This demo is mostly about you, but before we get into it, I'll quickly share a little about myself. My name is (your name), and I'm a senior account executive here at (your company). I've been helping (their title) like yourself (get results you are promising) for a few years now, so if you have any questions during this demo, just interrupt me and I'll answer them.
Sounds good?
Okay, great.
Now in order to actually see if I can help you, I need to learn a little more about your current situation. Do you mind if I ask you a few quick questions? If we can determine a fit, I'll then show you what we have to offer.
(optional) - At the end of the call we determine that we want to move forward, I'm going to ask for a $500 deposit. I like to say this just so there are no surprises when we get to that point.
Sounds good?
Okay, great.
Tonality During This Phase: Your tonality and pacing sets the stage for the rest of the call. If you are too "loosy goosy" with your tonality and questions, then the prospect won't close on the call. The tonality should be quick, clear, and enthusiastic. Use declaratives and inflections at this point.
Setting The Itinerary and Priming Prospect To buy: When you start the call, it's important to set the itinerary & make sure expectations are clearly stated before you start. You will tell the prospect that you will first learn more about their situation, take detailed notes, and if you feel that there is a fit, you will introduce them to your thesis, case studies, solution, & offers. Take detailed notes in your CRM. You also want to talk about money & commitment asap. Tell the prospect that at the end of the call, if there is a fit, you will ask for a deposit to move towards the next step. This primes them to make a decision & reduces the "shock" when you go for the close and commitment at the end of the call. If the prospect tells you that they can't make a decision on the call, then you can ask to reschedule with the decision makers or set the goal of the call to be to get buy-in so you can make the economic case to the decision maker. Ask the prospect if it's okay to record this call so they can share with their team members. You want to come across as "sharp". Don't stumble around. Just get to the point. Often the prospect will tell you that they "don't buy on the first call". This is okay. Most people don't, but for you, they will.
Don't pitch unqualified people. Determine the situation, problem, money, authority ASAP.
Current Situation
So, what motivated you to join me today? What piqued your interest?
How are you currently doing your job your solution helps them do)?
What is your current (metric 1 you are affecting?...Just ballpark...
What is your current (metric 2 you are affecting)?...Just ballpark...
What is your current (metric 3 you are affecting)?...Just ballpark...
What is your current (metric 4-cost per result?...Again, just ballpark...
Why do people buy your products or services? What is the big promise you are offering them? (optional for CEOs)
How much money do you think you are making per month? Again, just ballpark (optional for small business owners)
Future Situation
Where do you want to take this business in the next 3 months, 6 months, 12 months)?
What should (metric 1) look like in the next (time frame)?
What should (metric 2) look like in the next (time frame)?
What should (metric 3) look like in the next (time frame]?
Okay, great. And what is stopping you, in your own honest opinion, from hitting this goal on your own?
Okay, and how soon do you want to solve this problem? What happens if you don't solve this in that time frame?
Okay, I know that some problems are more important than others. How committed to solving this are you? Is this a threat level 1 or more of a backber
thing?
Finding Landmines Determining Decision Maker
Okay, great. If a hypothetical situation happened), would you be able to find a hypothetical solution that aligns with your process).
Hypothetically speaking, if we could help you hit your growth goal, are you able to afford at least (PRICE). Assuming, of course, we can actually move the needle for you?
Again, hypothetically speaking, if we could actually solve a meaningful problem for you, prove to you that we could deliver results, price it such that you get a strong return, and eliminate any downside to working with us, would you be the person who ultimately gives the green light? I only ask just so that I have a clear view of the decision making process.
Updating Avatar In Real Time
Listen intensely to the language the prospect is using.
Take detailed notes with respect to the problem and situation.
Introduce Case Studies And Track Record (Deck + Client List)
Drop the bombs on them.
Use concise language. Really know the story.
Have a list of references.
Update case studies in real time. Add interviews and quotes.
Background History
Walk through the background story in deck
Watch prospects as you are presenting. Update the language on the fly. Add notes below the slides.
If the prospect falls asleep, then sharpen up the story.
Iterating the story after listening to feedback.
Don't run through the whole thing slowly. Just go through it quickly if the prospect already watched the sales letter.
Walk Through Thesis, Mechanisms, And End States
Walk through the thesis steps on the call.
Ask the prospect if they watched the video beforehand. If they watched, then still go over the process.
After each explanation, ask the prospect if they are keeping up.
Designing on the fly.
Closing
Testing The Pricing In Real Time
Testing higher, lower, finding resistance.
Invent new features, then price them on the fly. You can see if they are feasible or not later.
Update the pitch in real time when the higher price resonates.
Updating Rebuttals and Questions In Real Time
Listen to the customer and update questions in real time.
After the call, spend time rewriting your answers.
Record Your Calls
Record calls and store them in a folder. You will be giving the calls to new sales people.
Record positive calls.
Don't share the testing calls, only share the calls that are well-done. Your sales team needs a good reference.
Update Funnel
Rewrite Sales Letter
Viral effects
Update the product and price
Do it again until it's hilariously profitable and getting crazy returns on ads.
Status Delta
Plunge
Mute
School
Domain
White tiger
Plane
Cars
Artwork - lending art. On loan from.
Kids
🎯Leverage Sales Process A-Z (From Engagement & Appointment (Discos & Demos) to Closing)
Founders and Execs should be able to validate the sales process themselves + record demos and refine the deck before hiring a junior rep. Junior folks should start as SDRs and MRRS while they are learning the ropes while shadowing founders.
An in-depth sales script is extremely necessary to standardize the sales process.
Pricing and terms are close to converging to market needs.
Validate the sales process and cycle length using inside or outside sales. You will be tweaking the offer, positioning and price on the fly with every sales call.
Build and test your sales script by Selling to your prospects by yourself. You will be developing an in-depth sales script (based off the sales letter) and tuning it as you speak to customers. You want at least 30 data points.
Your opportunities should be closing at 20%. If they are not, you will need to rework the sales process, or the marketing channel.
We use inside sales (selling over the phone) to do this because the feedback loop is so tight - meaning if you need to change the offer, the price, the position, or even the product during the sale, you can on the fly… In this step, you will learn your customer’s thoughts, feelings, objections, reservations, etc.. This information is extremely valuable. It drives feature development and you will use these insights to create your ads, video sales letters, webinars, etc.. MAKE SURE YOU COLLECT REAL PAYMENTS. People don’t lie with their credit cards. If you collect a deposit, a first payment or signed contract, that means you actually hit a nerve. If you can’t get these types of commitments, you will need to adjust your offer or your product. If you have trouble selling, you will need to be trained. Hiring an expensive salesperson right now is a no-no. As the CEO, Founder or Exec, you should be able to close deals on your own.
So once you have opportunities flying because your assets are so strong, we need to test the offer to make sure you are actually generating revenue and customers. If you are selling over the phone, we will help you develop the high-converting sales script using our templates and expertise. If you are selling using an automated funnel, we will help you develop the automated sequence such that you can drive conversions. In this step, it’s common that the pricing and features are tweaked to align better to the market’s desires. This is par for the course. We will help you iterate your offer and your price such that you will be able to close at least 20% of demos at a price that sustains the profitable business model. If you are unable to get sales at a price that sustains a profitable business, we will need to go back and iterate either the message, the price, or the product/service. This can take a few months, but this is the quickest way to validate the profitable business model.
With your sales letter & funnel, you have marketing solved & you are able to generate qualified leads in a predictable & efficient manner so we now need to convert those leads through a repeatable, efficient, profitable, scalable, and predictable sales process. By and large, the role of sales is to turn qualified leads into accounts at a rate greater than 8% (Ours are 30%). If you or reps can do this, you pretty much solved sales.
Historically, the sales process contains a “loosey-goosey” script or process without much detail produced by marketers or salespeople who rely on charisma and “feeling” to close sales... or worse... no script at all. This “loosey” method requires skilled salespeople, which is expensive, it can lead to mistruths being spouted by salespeople at scale, which causes angry customers & reputation damage. It also takes forever to ramp new reps & produces inconsistent conversion results which results in stress, an inability to effectively plan, allocate capital, & scale-up rapidly. Through creating a highly-detailed sales process, playbook, script, & all form of all-in-one-stop a-z resources, you and your team can quickly ramp junior or inexperienced reps, standardize & regulate the closing rate which makes it easier to plan & allocate resources, reduce the number of customer complaints at scale (since you can identify exactly where a sales rep went wrong through auditing), & achieve a hilariously-high return on your efforts.
A common misconception for founders or salespeople is thinking scripts are for beginners & are unnecessary. However, scripts allow one to focus on the tonality, pacing, & energy during the presentation & worry less about what is actually being said. This comes in handy when one isn't in a peak state, for example, when one is hungover or just broke up with one’s partner, or when one forgot to drink water or eat food and isn’t thinking straight, and instead of missing one’s layups, one’s muscle memory kicks in & sales are made in these non-ideal states. Exp: even though I wrote the script, I still used one every day while selling the first 500 customers of Spio.
You will notice that each part of the sales process is mapped to discrete steps & labeled. These discrete steps make it easy to train and ramp reps on the process and ensure the ramping is complete. A well-written script contains all points of the sales argument & the objections along with language patterns to help overcome those objections. The script usually takes a few adjustments to get working and these tweaks are easiest done by the one with the most domain expertise, who is most likely the founder. However, if the necessary resources (time, energy, capital, etc.) were spent in creating the sales letter, the sales script can be assembled in less than a day with little effort if the right frameworks are used.
Quick tips: Successful spur-of-the-moment language patterns are captured within the master script through continual updates. Remember that salesmanship is a skill. Learning it & practicing it is important. It typically takes 100 + pitches to actually get good and 1000 + to get extremely proficient. For this reason, founders should embark in formal sales training as they are testing the script. It’s typical for the demo close rate to start around 5%-7% and through practice, bubble up to 20%+ and 100%+ as one gets more practiced. Furthermore, a script is not the only part of a sales process. There are pre-demo warm ups sequences, follow-ups and lots of other strategies that one uses to achieve a consistent 8% + lead conversion rate. This process may look complex and it sort of is, however, if templates and workflows are followed, the building of the process is relatively easy and takes little time. Practice makes perfect!
Tracking and Reporting (Once the sales team is built and marketing is flooding the funnel, we will need to watch metrics like a hawk to make sure the machine remains profitable at scale. With more moving parts and more volume, efficiency will drop. Without proper tracking and tweaking, the machine can spin out of control. During this phase we will be helping you get really square on your economics, tweak features or even rebuild features to handle the increase in volume, dial in the customer success process so that you can manage volume, install managers, and craft renewal offers. We use this sheet to make sure that our machine is making money. We also help you install metric dashboards like Chartmogul or Baremetrics so you can track cash and revenue against lead source, rep, and campaign content. This will allow you to effectively allocate resources. We recommend chartmogul for revenue and cash tracking. This allows you to tag cash with lead source and rep so you can accurately determine your cost of acquisition).
🚀How in-depth does the script need to be?
Map as much as you possibly can. Our scripts are greater than 20 pages. Every language pattern, analogy, and closing pattern is documented. The script is continually updated. It's a living, breathing document.
🚀How do you ramp a rep?
Mirroring. Don't expect junior reps to figure things out on their own. You need to provide the example, then they will mirror you and make incremental changes to the process. You are making the step-function changes.
🚀Who makes a good rep?
Intelligent, competitive, financially motivated.
🚀Why not hire experienced reps?
If they are that good, they are already rich and not working for you. An "experienced" rep is typically not talented or they are not for hire since their current employer will fight to keep them.
🚀Who should be testing the sales script?
Founders and senior people should be testing the script. A junior person won't be able to iterate on the fly and make adjustments (this is important in the validation phase).
🚀How long does it take to validate the script?
It could take 2 days - 3 months, depending on how long your sales cycle is.
🚀What happens if the close rate is not greater than 20%?
You will need to tweak the pricing, the positioning, or the offer.
🚀What is a CRM?
A CRM is just a glorified spreadsheet that helps you keep track of your customers and prospects. It defines steps to your sales process and helps you work prospects down each step. They are pretty easy to use and not something to overthink. Don’t get caught up into the technical jargon of CRMs and gymnastics...they are pretty easy.
🚀What CRM do you recommend using?
We recommend a CRM called Close.io for sales. We have tried all of them. Hubspot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Soho, etc.. They all pretty much do the same thing, however, the ease of use and speed at which the tool operates is what we really care about...that’s why we recommend close.io. We have discount codes for most of these CRMs, just ask us and we will provide them to you.
🚀What if I don’t have sales experience?
Many of our customers don’t have sales experience when they start working with us. However, they are able to follow a step-by-step process that allows them to close deals. Sales experience is not necessary to get exceptional results.
🚀Who can do the sales calls for me?
As you are testing your offer and determining your pricing and features, you will be the one who is conducting the sales calls. We do not recommend anyone else doing the sales calls at this point, since they won’t have the domain expertise to exercise liberty with respect to pricing and product features on the call.
🚀How long does this process take?
The validation process takes approximately 1-6 months. The key metric here is the number of sales calls that you do. Ideally, you want to do at least 200-500 sales calls yourself to really validate your market, your price, and your offer. Yes, this could seem a little intimidating, however, this is necessary if you want to scale to millions extremely quickly. If you already have salespeople, we will be working with them to validate your offer and dial in your script.
🚀Can I do this without a product?
This is a great question and most of our customers asked the same thing. The key is that you want to sell without a product if you haven’t already developed it yet. The reason is that selling before building will help you build only features and products that have demand and save you years and millions in development costs. We will be using mockups and renderings to sell the product/solution before it exists. Elon Musk sold a spaceship to the moon for hundreds of millions with just renderings...you can sell a b2b or b2c simple offer :)
🚀What if my product is low-ticket and I want to use an automated funnel?
If your product is low-ticket, we still need to test the resonance with methods that don’t scale like inside sales and one-on-one webinars. This allows you to get the feedback necessary quickly. Automated funnels are great, but there is a time and a place for them. In the beginning, you don’t want to introduce any unnecessary feedback delays.
🚀What if I don’t have sales experience?
Many of our customers don’t have sales experience when they start working with us. However, they are able to follow a step-by-step process that allows them to close deals. Sales experience is not necessary to get exceptional results.
🚀Who can do the sales calls for me?
As you are testing your offer and determining your pricing and features, you will be the one who is conducting the sales calls. We do not recommend anyone else doing the sales calls at this point, since they won’t have the domain expertise to exercise liberty with respect to pricing and product features on the call.
🚀Can I hire an outsourced sales agency to do this?
In theory, an outsourced sales agency sounds useful and cost-effective, however, in practice it is not. The reason why these outsourced sales agencies don’t work is because they lack the domain expertise needed to sell the product effectively and even charge an extra 15-20% as management fees. As a result, it takes longer for you to get any real traction with this method, and you are paying large upfront fees and management fees which erode any margin and spiral you out of the black. For this reason, we don’t recommend using outsourced sales agencies.
🚀How long does this process take?
The validation process takes approximately 1-6 months. The key metric here is the number of sales calls that you do. Ideally, you want to do at least 200-500 sales calls yourself to really validate your market, your price, and your offer. Yes, this could seem a little intimidating, however, this is necessary if you want to scale to millions extremely quickly. If you already have salespeople, we will be working with them to validate your offer and dial in your script.
🚀Can I do this without a product?
The key is that you want to sell without a product if you haven’t already developed it yet. The reason is that selling before building will help you build only features and products that have demand and save you years and millions in development costs. We will be using mockups and renderings to sell the product/solution before it exists. Elon Musk sold a spaceship to the moon for hundreds of millions with just renderings...you can sell a b2b or b2c simple offer :)
Administration Inputs
Transaction Fee (The average transaction fee you pay on the revenue. With Stripe, this could be 2.9%):
Fixed_costs_per_month (The fixed expenses per month. This includes rent, engineering, administration costs. This could also include other salaries. Content creators, marketers):
Fixed cost_increase_per_100_customers_per_month (With each new batch of customers, typically the fixed expenses increase due to the need for more office space, more administration, etc.):
Fcf_left_in_company (The amount of cash flow left in the company. Sometimes founders take cash out of the company):
Valuations
Tax_rate (The tax rate that applies in your local area):
Inflation rate (The inflation rate used to discount the future cash flows (a part of the discount rate)):
Max_time_period (The length of the graphs):
Projection period_dcf (The amount of time in days where the cash flows are summed and discounted):
Discount_rate (The rate at which the cash flows are discounted):
R_perpetual growth (the rate at which the cash flows are assumed to grow at the end of the projection period. This is typically 2%-3%):
EBITDA multiple (A multiple used to estimate the value of the business based on the ebitda at the time where the ebitda is calculated defined by the ebitda projection period):
Pe_multiple (A multiple used to estimate the value of the business based on the earnings at the time where the earnings are calculated defined by the earning_projection_period):
Ev_revenue_multiple (the revenue multiple used to determine the value of the business at the time defined by the projection_period_ev_revenue):
Important Outputs
LTV (Lifetime value of the customer. Determined by the pricing):
Monthly Expenses:
CAC (blended and per channel) (Total cost to acquire a customer. Marketing + Sales Cost)
Free Cash Flow (Free cash flow vs. time):
DCF Value (Discounted future cash flow value calculated using the projection period defined in inputs):
Enterprise Value (The enterprise value calculated from the discounted future cash flow. Rev Multiple Value. P/E Multiple. Net Cash Flow Vs. Time. Customers Vs. Time. Revenue, Earnings, Cash Vs. Time Share Price Vs. Time. c_consumption. The amount of money needed to be raised if it's positive.. T_profitability day. The day the business gets profitable):
Profit per customer_per_unit_of_time (When cash is an issue, you need to address the highest end of the market to get the p_dot value up. If the p_dot value is too low, you may run out of cash before you are cash flow positive if you don't have enough cash to start with):
Positive_cash_flow_day (The day the business/offer reaches cash flow positive.
Itv/cac ratio (You want this to be at least 3):
Derive Benefit and Value and Value Statement/ROI Justification
Sales Statement: Value = Benefit - Costs
Direct Effect
Metric2(Metric 1) - this notation just means that Metric2 is a function of Metric1 or Metric2 is affected by Metric1.
If Metric2 is profitable, then you can stop here. For example let's say that you increased revenue (metric) by X amount and profit (metric 2) was affected by Y amount. We need a relationship between X and Y.
So you can say that you impacted profit by Y amount in X timeframe-boom there's your claim.
The relationship between metric 2 and metric 1 is simple: Y = X - costs.
So if you can directly affect revenue, you usually don't have much trouble proving the monetary benefit.
The buyer will have a general understanding of the costs based and the relationship between revenue and gross through gross margin and net margin.
However, this assumes a 100% probability that you can affect revenue, and this is not true in the real world, so we need to assign a probability to the event of revenue increase happening.
So let's assume that you can affect revenue by $200k, but the probability of this happening may only be perceived as only 20%- based on historical data or the buyer's doubt. The probability factors in the perceived belief relative to the customer as well.
How do you determine the probability of events? Use historical data, and assumptions or data that other credible sources have curated.
So for example, let's say your solution increases revenue by $200k but your prospect perceives only a 20% probability of that event happening, so the expected value E[X] = $200k 2 = $40k. So the expected value is actually $40k, not $200k relative to the prospect. For example, a nice suit can increase the odds of attracting a mate, and increase the odds of retaining a mate (by whatever assumptions you found), perhaps the odds of you getting more opportunities with work which increases the income, which increases the odds of your mate sticking with you and your kids being successful to have other kids! We just sold the benefits of the suit!
A health example may be: This supplement increases protein synthesis in whatever body function (I'm not a doctor btw), which decreases the odds of disease, which increases the odds of living longer, which increases the odds of making your kids successful by interacting with them and increases your earning potential! We just sold the benefit of the supplement!
You also must make sure that the prospect agrees with the probability of outcome. The earlier you are in the product, the lower the probability will be that you can achieve the results and the less believable the assumption will be to the prospect.
This takes a little practice, but, once you get the hang of it, you will become a boss and superstar in whatever situation.
All this is probabilistic modeling and any rational person will respect it (even if you think your buyers only buy on emotion - btw they don't). Arguments like this blow emotional arguments out of the water and ACTUALLY CAUSE EMOTION. It's just that most people are
not aware of the mechanics going on under the hood.
Once the benefits are derived, we need to map out the costs. So we can compare the two to come up with the value statement.
Create Value Statement & ROI Justification (More Detail in VSL Screenshot)
Craft Initial Sales Letter
Start with a slide deck template. Prefer keynote. Write the letter in the slide notes.
Objectives
Communicate the sales argument (long enough for things to click for the audience)
Position the solution as the best or only option
Make it go viral due to its utility.
Write Headline
Stages of Sophistication
New Claim - Market Never Heard The Claim
Second Claim - Market Heard The Claim and it needs to be magnified
Magnified Claim Not Working - Market is saturated with the claim and is looking for a new mechanism.
Magnified Features - Market is saturated with the claim and mechanism and one must magnify the features (better, faster, cheaper).
Hammered Market/Committed - Market is aware of claims, features, and costs. Only way to sell is through identification (alignment to celebs or people they want to be like).
There is always a way to win. The headline will determine the business.
Examples
On Building A Remote Commission-Only Sales Team In 30 Days
For SaaS Founders: How I Took A Toronto-Based Fin-Tech Startup From From $0-$1M In 12 Months
How To Look Like A Movie Star In 90 Days
Insights On Current Events/Quality Of Insights
Current trends and explanation of trends creates status delta. Proves you are an expert in the field.
Making your own insights. Synthesis. Cite things.
Helping the audience creates status. The more you give, the more trust and status you get.
Listen to the content your avatar is listening to and comment on the content.
Trends change. The top part of your sales letter can change with time. The bottom or core doesn't change much once you have a solution that is delivering case studies.
Understanding The Prospect's Problem
Causes a massive amount of rapport/status delta.
If the prospect believes that you understand their problem more than they do, they will buy whatever you are selling.
Most of marketing is describing the problem, then slipping in call to action.
The root problem/problems. Typically lack of technology or lack of knowledge or both.
The lack of knowledge is the reason why the sales letter exists and propagates.
The rest of the sales letter is proving this core concept, then offering an efficient solution to the problem through some mechanism.
Examples
Entrepreneurs fail not because they don't understand the steps required to build the business, but because they don't understand the order in which to execute the steps.
Businesses cannot scale because they are not properly utilizing the social platforms and advertising.
You can look like a movie star if you follow the right protocol. As you learn more about the problems in the market, you may find the root.
It's fine to not start with the root problem. I can help determine the root.
Background/Grounding Story Template:
Founder was an expert within a particular domain
Founder encountered a problem. Painful problem.
Founder looked everywhere for a solution to that problem, but couldn't find one.
One day, the founder encountered some technology or guide (or some intervention).
The founder used that intervention to solve the problem.
The solution worked for the founder, better than they expected (like discovering fire for the first time)
Everyone started asking the founder how he/she got such amazing results. It was like a secret recipe and formula.
Reluctantly, the founder started helping other people with their homebuilt solution in the shadows.
The homebuilt solution worked for others as well, and it took off. The customers got results that were better than could be ever conceived.
Now it's the founder's mission to solve this problem for others since his/her life was changed in such a positive way due to the solution.
Walk Through Activities/Method
Current State -> Activity, Decision–Making -> Desired State
Chronological
Describe The Old Way & The New Way (Rapport)
Don’t Introduce Your Solution
Proving The Activity Is Right Using UUIs
UUI: Unique useful insight
The prospect needs to believe the activity is correct.
Introduce the cause-effect relationship between the new way and the new result using proof and examples.
Answer questions with respect to any edge cases to catch prospects in edge case situations.
UUI Components: Point, Example, Proofs, & Questions
Many UUIs Belong To 1 Activity:
Activity
UUI Set 1
UUI Set 2
UUI Set 3
Examples:
Activity 1: Sell Before You Build to Save Money and Time (New Way)
Old Way: The old way involves building products without fully understanding the customer or building offers for multiple customers simultaneously, and using the iteration method to find a problem in the market. It could involve pre-maturely hiring a team and raising money and introducing complexity to the capital table. To spend months or even years building a product without ever pre-selling results in disappointment and frustration.
Old Result: Frustrating. Very difficult to get to product-market-fit.
New Way/Activity: Go heavy on research using sound principles, and flood your brain with customer data without writing one line of code. Combine customer data with your unique insights to hypothesize useful offers. Spin up a working model using lean engineering, and sign up your first customers without hiring anyone or recruiting investors. Recruit an investor only if your solution is capital intensive. When you do build, be confident that efforts won't be wasted.
New Result: Avoid personal problems, team complexity and drama, massive dilution, and burning capital and calories. Watch all teams become hyper-focused and motivated-like NASA in 1958. Get your first paying customers within a few months and collect your first rock-solid case studies.
UUI: 2 Data Streams Are Required to Build Something Useful
UUI Description: The two data streams needed to build something useful include: (1) Environment data - what is in the realm of possibilities, current technologies, trends, active forces, and winds blowing in an environment, and (2) Customer data-activities the customer is trying to do or doing, the path they are on, and specific forces acting on them.
Pictures (before/after contrast/illustration): Time-Dependent Path of Customer Overlaid on Environment Force Fields (Detailed in VSL Screenshot)
Questions: "Which data stream am I lacking?"
Answer: Most entrepreneurs have (1) covered - they understand how to build and how the technology
works; however, they are missing (2) - how the technology applies in a way that makes it useful. Once the
entrepreneurs have a full scope, they can spot the intersection points of the customer's path and the forces in the environment.
Question: "Why do I need both data streams?"
Answer: "Having one data stream without the other is like navigating a dangerous jungle with perfectly functioning ears, blindfolded. To properly navigate through the jungle, one needs to open up that second data stream and take off the blindfold."
Use Images, Graphs, Videos, & Stories
Keep it simple
Use images and diagrams to explain points
Use stories to keep things entertaining
Give 2 Options to Prospects: Speak with Them Directly or Their Team (Don’t Feature Dump Here, Just Offer Them The Help)
Case Studies Template
Again, [insert number of people] have used us to achieve fantastic results.
[person name] from [company name] was [insert after state] within [timeframe] and said [insert quote]. [insert proof shot or money shot]."
"[person name] from [company name] was [insert after state] within [timeframe] and said [insert quote]. [insert proof shot or money shot]."
"[person name] from [company name] was [insert after state] within [timeframe] and said [insert quote]. [insert proof shot or money shot]."
Benefits (List benefits from the benefit derivation)
New Activity 1:
The Benefit of Activity 1: Better, Faster, Cheaper
Introduce Vehicle and Clearly Explain Features
Walk through the thesis, except with your solution, highlighting the better, faster, cheaper way using your vehicle.
If the thesis is done right, the solution perfectly aligns to the gaps the prospects learned they have in the method.
You may identify your own gaps in your solution at this point.
Feature Examples
Instead of doing activity 1 this way, you can do it using ______. It's faster and cheaper.
Instead of doing activity 2 this way, you can do it using ______. It's faster and cheaper.
Provide demonstrations
Design features on the fly
Keep it limited to only a few key features
Offer and ROI Justification
Anchor (Value), Feature (Value), Feature (Value), Feature (Value), Total (Total Value), Warning/Scarcity (Ex. Only 40 available, prices go up on date, incentive-based pricing), Bonus (For A Limited Time, we are offering (extra feature/complimentary offer)), Guarantee/Risk Reversal (Example: 30-day money back guarantee, 30-day-trial, 7-day-eval period)
Always Include A Guarantee - The Guarantee Is The Business. (If you cannot guarantee, then you shouldn't be pushing the product or solution. If you want to succeed, you want to staple yourself to the guarantee and this will guarantee you sales, which puts a lot of pressure on the backend to deliver the solution. The engineering team and product team will not like that you are making guarantees because that means a lot more work for them, however, they are required to build truly amazing solutions. This is another example of how the sales letter affects the product development)
Action-Based Guarantee (Workmanship guarantees, action-based guarantees, time guarantees. Action-based guarantees are great because they define exactly what the customer must do and what you must do to get the results. It makes everything clear and it makes it easier to do customer support)
ROI Justification (If you are selling a high-ticket with multiple possible outcomes, you can use the ROI justification document to clearly state outcome values, probabilities of the outcome, and an Expected value. Example of ROI justification)
Economic buyers will love this because it shows that you did the work of mapping out the business case for them. It also shows that you understand their business just as well as they do if not better.
If you do the ROI justification correctly, the prospect will have no choice but to close. This is one of the most powerful tools in your stack. It cuts through the bullshit and states all assumptions and outcomes. True decision-makers only need this document to make a decision.
🎯Validate Unit-Case Economics (Profitable, Scalable, & Rapid Growth in Short-Term & Long-Term)
As Andreessen describes: "And you can always feel product/market fit when it’s happening. The customers are buying the product just as fast as you can make it — or usage is growing just as fast as you can add more servers. Money from customers is piling up in your company checking account. You’re hiring sales and customer support staff as fast as you can."
Validate CPD, show up rate, close rate, cash received in 30 days, ACV, CAC payback period, gross contribution.
Tweak messaging, sales script, pricing, marketing channel until you validate the unit case economics.
Aim for 1.2X cash ROI within 30 days minimum.
Use unit case economics spreadsheet to justify investment thesis.
Don't scale before you validate the unit economics (prevent the death spiral).
Determine your Cost to Acquire a Customer. Combine your marketing costs and the costs to close a customer. Make sure your product is priced so that your gross contribution is 3X the CAC over a 1 year time. Ideally your CAC payback period should be less than 60 days. If you are not achieving these rates, you will need to rework your marketing funnel and your sales process.
🚀Why is this stage so important?
The business is just the duplication of the unit case. If the unit case doesn't work, then business building activities will just amplify a turd.
🚀What is a death spiral?
Investors push for growth before the unit case is validated. The unit case loses money and growing the company results in burning all the money until the company dies. Founders enter delusional land.
🚀What do you need to validate?
You need to validate a lead generation, sales mechanism, pricing combination that results in a profitable business unit case. Ex. Facebook Ads, Inside Sales, $50k offer. Ex. Outbound Prospecting, Inside Sales, $100k offer.
🚀What happens if the CAC is too large?
Redo your funnel or change your pricing.
🚀What if the payback period is too long?
Front-load your offer and sign larger contracts. If you don't have a high-ticket offer, then spend time developing it and upselling customers.
🚀Why is this stage so important?
The business is just the duplication of the unit case. If the unit case doesn't work, then business building activities will just amplify a turd.
🚀What is a death spiral?
Investors push for growth before the unit case is validated. The unit case loses money and growing the company results in burning all the money until the company dies. Founders enter delusional land.
🚀What do you need to validate?
You need to validate a lead generation, sales mechanism, pricing combination that results in a profitable business unit case. Ex. Facebook Ads, Inside Sales, $50k offer. Ex. Outbound Prospecting, Inside Sales, $100k offer.
🚀What happens if the CAC is too large?
Redo your funnel or change your pricing.
🚀What if the payback period is too long?
Front-load your offer and sign larger contracts. If you don't have a high-ticket offer, then spend time developing it and upselling customers.
🎯Leverage Infinite Upsides & Negative Downsides (Evergreen Lifetime Value from Loyal Allies)
Customer Success: As you are overwhelming your business with customers, you will run into customer success and product bottlenecks/operations bottlenecks. Example: Server speed, slow onboarding times due to lack of standardized process, false starts due to new customers being confused on how to get started. This is a good problem to have, but still an important problem to solve. We will help you define all the steps that customers need to take to be successful with your product, then help you map them to a process that a junior person can execute.
🚀What tools do you use to help with customer success?
We have experience using Helpscout and other service backend tools, however, we prefer to use our CRM for this type of activity so everything stays organized.
Rebuilding Products (Optional)
When you are driving loads of customers into your business, your product and system will be put under significant stress.
In some cases, technical limits are reached and product development teams are forced to rebuild. When this happens, you don’t want to slow down sales, you simply bust your bum and work overtime to make sure the product can meet the demands of your market.
Renewal Offers
As you are scaling up and building your fantastic business, we will need to start thinking about renewal offers for the future. You don’t want to get caught with your pants down once your offer runs its course and yield starts to drop. You will need to focus on innovating to stay in the lead.
🎯Leverage Hybrid Model (Combination of DIY + DWY + DFY) for Unlimited Scalability (ASAP)
The next question you need to ask yourself is: Does your solution scale?
Will it break if you bring on 100 customers per month?
If the answer is "Yes", you will need to invest in making your solution scalable. You might need to develop an onboarding process, or bring in customer support, or build expectation content.
And Yes… We’ll help you build a scalable solution even if you’re helping millions of customers at once!
🎯Leverage Joint Venture (JV) Partnership & Collaboration (Referral) (Insider Allies)
Validating a direct channel is important because it allows you to test and iterate the sales process, price, and offer before launching thousands of people at your offer.
This works if you have access to someone with a network of folks who are likely to resonate with your audience.
Sending lots of channel traffic without first testing the sales process and offer is extremely risky and irresponsible toward all stakeholders.
🚀Who makes a good channel partner?
Influencers, magazines, social media stars. folks with complimentary offers
🚀What does a channel partner want?
To provide value to their customers or followers, safeguard reputation, and earn money
🚀How do you approach channel partners?
Mostly built on personal relationships and introductions. Cold approaching does work if you have the stats (EPC) to back up your claims
🚀When does it make sense to engage a channel?
When you are confident in your offer, your price and you understand the messaging needed to convert.
🎯Leverage Paid Inbound & Outbound (Omnipresence through Omnichannel) (Domain Authority)
Paid advertising is the lever that launches you into the millions. It allows you to overwhelm calendars with appointments that your salespeople close. The name of the game is solving for the ad-audience-funnel combination that prints qualified appointments to your calendar at a price that sustains a profitable business model.
Paid advertising works with all businesses since most everyone is on social platforms. It takes someone extremely skilled with copywriting AND analytics to be an effective advertiser.
A competitive advantage can specifically be the ability to leverage paid advertising. Two identical products. The one who uses paid advertising better will win market share.
You start with a small budget to validate your CAC. Then you scale up. Reckless spending is stupid and unnecessary.
The more you spend, the more effective your ads campaigns are (cpl, cpc, ctr, cac, etc. drop drastically). Just let the billion dollar algorithm help you target the best fit! Utilize vertical & horizontal scaling to optimize the algorithm!
The more you hit people with your outbound, the more likely they are to click on your ads and travel through the funnel. The more you hit with your inbound, the more likely they are to respond to your outbound.
High CPL, CPC, CTR, Etc. don’t truly matter as long as your polaris star (ROAS) is >10X. Determine every detail (cpm, ctr, cpc, cpa, etc.), they are the sole needs for feedback-loop
Layer on other paid mediums. LinkedIn, YouTube, GDN
Founders need to be proficient with paid traffic. It's like trading. A junior person managing hundreds of thousands a month is like trusting a baby with your Interactive Broker account.
Paid Traffic Testing (In some cases, experienced entrepreneurs want to get straight to testing with cold social ads. We only recommend this strategy if the entrepreneur is comfortable spending cash on the testing phase ($5k-$10k) and has intent to work with the cold channels to get them working which could take 1-3 months. We recommend a minimum budget of $3k per month and patience + time to go through the iteration process. If we can’t generate appointments and leads with our messaging, then we will need to rewrite the ads.
Once the team is assembled, you must scale it rapidly in order to keep the compound-effect of momentum going on (dominate market share, moat monopoly). You already know that you can create profit at the unit level., you know that you can generate leads with your high-converting funnel & assets, convert those leads with a sales script, & an enthused band of trained salespeople who are hungry to earn those hilariously-high commission checks. Instead of doing press releases, channel partnerships, events & other traditional big media spends that decrease efficiency at scale, we instead duplicate the previous steps & scale-up rapidly with paid advertising. This method allows you to scale extremely quickly while preserving margins. I reinvested $2.5m of my own money on ads & turned it into more than $10m using this method.
There are few better ways to scale up than to use paid ads. Up until a few years ago, it’s difficult to reach people “long range.” Now, it’s incredibly easy to reach people if one knows how to use paid advertising channels effectively.
🚀How fast should you scale paid ads? You should scale as fast as you can to keep the sales team’s calendar packed. Typical increments include 20%-50% per month.
🚀How difficult is it to learn paid ads? Paid ads aren't hard if the sales argument & funnel is built properly. However, you should learn from someone who has experience spending their own money, since many nuances are found when the stakes are high. Formal training with paid ads should be taken by the founders to get set up. It’s also recommended that continual training be taken since the platforms are constantly changing.
🚀Why does efficiency remain constant as we scale up ads? Efficiency preservation as one scales is possible due to the effect of competitive forces introduced on the reps as more reps enter the system. This drives up production of the whole team. Another reason why the efficiency of the campaigns improves is that the audiences within the ad platforms get more targeted through the use of the platforms’ lookalike feature, which increases the odds of your ads being shown to qualified prospects as you feed the platform more customer data. This means you can scale up to millions of spends and you can further widen the moat between you and competitors as you go. Another quick point: Founders need to be constantly watching those advertising accounts. A media buyer through an agency is not incentivized properly to make solid profit.
Tap into new audiences full of potential customers and unlock new growth by reaching only customers that are likely to buy and are similar to your best purchasers + retarget them with a customized campaign (personalized) tailored just for them.
Attract Customers With Paid Ads (Paid advertising will help you grow really quickly since it staples you to the calendar. Find an audience and create campaigns that push the case study and the claim to your landing page. Install follow-up campaigns so that you can cheaply put appointments on the calendar. The advertising is as simple as pushing the case study. Your customers won’t mind it because they get exposure through the ads which is free traffic. The Cost Per Appointment Can be Between $200-$500. Budget $3k per month)
You should aim to recoup advertising costs back within 30 days. Ideally, 1.2X returns within the first 30 days to account for refunds, errors, other variance. (Hint: Our ROAS is ranging from 2X to 10X)
Appointments or trials should be bought at price - the total CAC- meaning if it costs you $50 for an appointment, your ad portion of the CAC could be $250. If an appointment costs you $300, the ad portion of the CAC could be $1500-$2k
🚀Does paid advertising work for selling to execs? - Yes, it does. If people are spending time on social platforms, then paid interruption advertising will work.
🚀What is involved in the testing and validation phase? You will be testing audiences and ad angles with "micro-budgets". You are scanning the audience for resonance. You will spend $3k per month to start. This will give you enough data to iterate your experiment or validate that it works.
🚀What makes a good ad? - Specificity and education. We use what are called trojan horse ads - Ads disguised as editorials. The best way to influence someone is to provide a ton of value free of charge and direct them down the funnel using a clear call to action.
🚀Why do so many people lose money with ads? - Many folks don't have the necessary knowledge of the advertising platforms or they don't understand the fundamentals of advertising. False negatives are all too common with unqualified media buyers.
🚀How long does it take to learn these advertising skills? - With the proper training, one can learn the hard skills in a matter of months. Experience comes from putting your own money on the line and really committing to solving for scale.
🚀When do you layer on other channels? - When you hit a point of diminishing returns for your current channel. You will see a higher ROI by exhausting one channel and layering one by one, than starting with multiple channels and grappling to make all of them profitable at once.
🚀Why does efficiency go down with scale? - ROI is dependent message-market resonance, which is a function of personalization. With higher volume and higher reach, personalization decreases, which decreases message-market resonance and decreases ROI.
🚀Why is scaling advertising so hard? - Facebook and other platforms would rather see thousands of advertisers spending $1k per day than one advertiser spending $Ms per day, because this creates a better experience for their user, which is in FB's interest long-term. This in turn makes it harder for advertisers to scale - still possible, but special skills and knowledge are required.
🚀How hard is it to scale paid advertising? It gets extremely tough once you are spending more than $500 per day. You will definitely need to be trained on this skill.
🚀When do you layer on other channels? - When you hit a point of diminishing returns for your current channel. You will see a higher ROI by exhausting one channel and layering one by one, than starting with multiple channels and grappling to make all of them profitable at once.
🚀Are your customers really on social media? It is extremely likely that your customers are using some type of social media, whether they admit it to you or not. People check in on their grandkids, kids, ex-wives/husbands, etc.. They are likely using either Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, LinkedIn, Twitter, or all of them simultaneously. The hard part is targeting them. We will be helping you determine your audience that converts. This takes some time and patience and requires you to spend time learning.
🚀Can an agency just do the ads for me? This is a great question and the truth is that the media buying is the one of the highest leverage activities one can do. If done right, you can turn $100k into $500k in a few months. Leaving this job up to a junior person at an agency who was delivering pizzas 3 months ago is insane! For this reason, we work with you to become versed in media buying.
How much money does it take to start with paid traffic? We recommend starting with $3k per month during the testing phase and waiting to determine your cash on cash ROI. Then we scale up to $10,$50, $100k, $300k per month. If we can maintain a healthy ROI, then we can scale to the moon and collect insane profits.
🚀How long does it take to get set up? It takes a few days to set up your ads, however, it takes a few months to validate your cash-on-cash ROI. This is why patience is needed and a stable lead source and conversion mechanism is already validated so you are not forced to make paid advertising work. Working with us as our mastermind is the key to unlocking insane results.
🚀Can I hire an agency to do the paid advertising? Yes, however, if they are not compensated on profit, then the incentives are mis-aligned. If the agency is unwilling to work on profit, and is charging you a steep retainer, then you know that they are optimizing for retainers and not for performance. It’s much better to learn these skills in house, then comp your media buyer on profit of the whole machine. Media buying is one of the highest-leverage things you can do. You can turn $100k into $500k in a few months. Trusting someone junior at an agency to do this for you is irresponsible and often results in waste, failure and frustration.
🚀How much money does it take to start with paid traffic? We recommend you to have at least $10K/Month if you’re just getting started. Quite a lot for beginners.. That’s why you should start with organic method first (exchange your time, effort, focus, etc. if you can’t afford capital)
Inbound Paid Inputs
Media_spend_per_month (The amount spent per month. Use a single channel here since the rates will change. You can add channels. Don't want to use FB and Google. Just model using one. This illustrates the importance of focus. If you do blend the channels, then you can average the costs and CPMs):
CPM (The cost per thousand impressions on the platform. This number is dynamic. It determines the cost of a lead on the platform. The CTR and landing page conversion rates are relatively constant. The CPMs are dynamic because it's an auction. You improve this number by writing killer ads that are based on the sales argument):
CTR (Average Clickthrough rate on the platform. Typically 1-2% if you have a good ad):
Funnel Conversion Rate (The rate at which the funnel turns a set of eyeballs into a lead. This is typically 2%. You can define the lead to be whatever you want. If you define the lead to be an opt-in, then the lead conversion rate will be lower than if you defined a lead to be a booking or a quiz (where there is more friction). If there is more friction, then the sales conversion rate will be higher):
Time_to_market inbound (The time between the first impression and the lead. Typically 1-2 days. It's almost instant with paid traffic channels. (One of the advantages over outbound prospecting channels)):
Lead_to_customer_conversion_rate (The rate at which a lead is converted into a customer from the paid channel. This is typically 1-2% if you are defining the lead to be an opt-in):
🎯Scale Sales Team (Get to Decision-Makers Directly) (From Small, Medium, to Large Enterprises)
Bring On Reps To Help You With Outbound Prospecting (Before you ramp up with a sales team and invest into the operations, make sure that you can validate the price and the sales process. Notice I hit $40k per month myself before I brought on someone to help with the sales. Your first hire will be someone who will help you with the outbound prospecting. They will run the campaigns on your behalf and pack your calendar so that you can close deals. Once they get the hang of that, you can start allowing them to shadow you, where they will learn the sales process and script. Then you can start giving them surplus demos if there are surplus demos. Ideally, you want to hire someone in-house who can work with you in the flesh. You will also be able to keep motivated since it can be lonely).
Hire commission-based reps. The best reps will work on a commission-heavy compensation plan.
Automate the training as much as you can. Online videos, recorded demos, lethal sales scripts.
Start them with end to end sales using outbound prospecting. Reps will value opportunities much more than if they just waltzed in and jumped on the calendar.
Give them 6 weeks to prove themselves, then drop them if they don't perform.
Pay them 10% -15% - they should be making $100k-$300k per year.
Incentive a quick ramp time with all-in-one-stop platform, bonuses (comp. structure) and strict deadlines.
Hire fast and fire fast.
Multi-Billion Dollar ARR through focusing on Fortune 500 Companies, Inc 500, & Other Large Enterprises, SMEs, Etc.
Use VSL or Webinar to Deposit & Refine Qualified Candidates (Front-End to Back-End) & All-in-One-Stop Platform (Hybrid Model) (Training, Management, Reporting, Audit, Community, Live Q&A Call, Templates, Etc) = Similar to Your Client Acquisition Machine!
Employees who put skin in the game perform better than those who don’t.
This will be your 2nd business (People pay you to work for you and your clients). You can consider something like RevGenius, LinkedIn, Indeed, Etc.
Once you have your first spectacular case study or two, and you bring in more customers using your marketing and sales process, you will put pressure on your backend and you will be forced to use tech and leverage to deliver.
Hiring a sales team is extremely easy if you have leads to give them and really solid sales letters and you have reference points with your own demos.
Once you have a process that is working, and you have a marketing channel that works, you need to scale it up with a sales team. First pack your calendar, then pack another calendar.
You will do some recruiting and ramp salespeople up on the process you took to get to your first $100k per month in sales.
Can Sell $100k Per Month. Salespeople will be taking appointments all day and closing deals. You only need 1-2 salespeople to hit $200k-$300k per month in sales. Typically, your first salesperson will start as a prospecting helper for you, then shadow you while you do your calls, then they will eventually start taking calls themselves.
Can Be Completely Remote. Salespeople will work in their home offices so a workspace is not needed. Example: My first salesperson was in Arkansas and I was in Toronto. We got along fine and did great work together. Doing things remote allows you to keep profits up and costs down.
Read And Iterate The Script And Sales Letter. The pitch is continually refined until it’s rock-solid.
Objections and questions are added to the script so that a new rep can ramp quickly.
If the sales letter is written well, then the salespeople will have no problem selling.
Sales management is simply holding reps accountable to tracking and having them show up every day.
You also want to audit their calls so you can pick up on things in the market and adapt your script and process.
Good Salespeople Want To Be On Commission. This allows you to scale up and down elastically. All you need to do is buy enough ads so that your salespeople have full calendars. Pay them 10-15% commission.
You Can Operate At 50%-70% Net Margins (You want to keep expenses low, you don’t need a big office, you can operate out of an apartment).
Stay In “The Pocket” (At this point, you will be pushing and making a ton of money)
Some months, you may make $500k-$600k per month profit. Don’t get phased by this. Just keep stacking so you can apply that capital later when you leverage your capital and your skills. Don’t fall out of momentum. Stick to it and make a life changing amount of money.
You Are Working Your Butt Off. The better you are at getting return for clients, the easier your job will get and the bigger you can scale, and the more profit you will make.
You Are Accumulating Insights And Cash. Work as hard as you can and learn as much as you can. You will be on sales calls and support calls for 8-10 hours per day. Don’t stop selling. Don’t stop buying ads.
Keep The Team Small And Specialized. When you are starting, you may not have the luxury of choosing the best salespeople since you are not proven. As a result, you will need to bring on newbies and train them. As you grow, you will be able to start to afford better reps who can really crush it for you. It’s better to train and grow the reps in house than it is to hire seasoned reps, however, it’s good to have a few seasoned reps in there so that you can learn from their experience as well.
Create Systems and Protocols To Enable Scale - Hire Operator (Without a protocol, you won’t be able to teach other people how to execute the steps (you are chained to the done-for-you work). You want to hire and install an operator and admin to execute the process that you are doing to help the specific customer. The better the protocol you make, the easier it is for you to get results with your operator. Pay them a base fee plus a % of revenue or your business).
Make sure that the contracts are tight because the people who work with you will likely start competing with you. Pay the operator a percentage of the revenue instead of a flat fee.
You cannot outsource the copywriting and sales letter creation (or ad creation), but you can outsource the funnel building and some of the set up with the apps. Also, you can outsource the tracking procedure.
All That Matters Is That Customers Get Results and Returns (Customers just care about results. If you spend the time figuring out the process, they will be willing to buy the “speed.” Whether you provide the results with a protocol or done-for-you service, it doesn’t matter to the customer. Stack Your Case Studies After each case study, add it to your case study bank. The more strong case studies you have, the stronger the marketing will be and the better reputation you will get. Some customers won’t want to give testimonials and case studies because they will keep you their dirty little secret. That’s okay. Just let the returns talk. The right customers will get it).
Stick To A Single Niche Or Vertical (You will erode your competitive advantage. Your protocol is not infinitely robust, so you want to keep working with customers who are good fits for your protocol and will get results. There are compounding effects when you work with a single type of customer which will drive down the cost to work with new customers and increase your profits. You want to be the best or only option in the market).
Once core assumptions (marketing, sales, and product) are validated, you enter the business building activities.
Hire where it hurts. The order for us was - customer success manager, then the sales manager, then the marketing manager, then a product manager.
Founders need to proficient with all departments or balls will be dropped
Scaling outbound is a fantastic way to ramp up lead generation. This requires that you hire and bring on BDRs or SDRs to hit 100-150 cold prospects every day and book demos. Scaling outbound works well for offers with at least $6k in annual gross profit contribution.
Once you tested the funnel, script and you are converting leads plus making profit at the unit level, it’s time to duplicate the process through the use of a remote-commission-based sales team that pays you to join. When you solve marketing & have a great sales script, you can install pretty much anyone into the sales cockpit and they will be able to make it rain.
The typical way of recruiting salespeople includes the use of recruiters, job fairs, interviews, & offering salaries to folks who may or may not be real closers. This way is extremely expensive, slow, frustrating, & usually ineffective. A better way to recruit & onboard is to create a “hiring video funnel”, promote that funnel through social channels & job boards to conduct interviews in a group environment using a live (evergreen) webinar... then get reps to pay for the opportunity to join your team and be trained! This method allows you to quickly recruit high-quality reps, eliminate all risk of hiring, and actually make a profit as you go.
To summarize the experiment results, it was found that those who invest in the opportunity & “pay to play” feel a greater sense of urgency that shortens ramp time are more likely to take risks (salesperson virtue) than those who don’t pay a fee. It was also found that 1 in 3 reps were successful, where success is defined as onboarded and producing meaningful results. Knowing this success rate helps managers combat the tendency to pity the underperforming reps & invest resources into trying to make a rep who is struggling, good, when instead investing resources into making good reps great.
There is a specific framework used to create the hiring funnel & process that was validated. We offer training on how to do this and templates to make the process fast. Must you charge a fee? Sometimes hiring managers and founders are a bit uncomfortable charging people to work for them, you can start the hiring process by not charging, then after your first few reps get fantastic results, you can introduce the fee since you will be confident that the fee is worth it to them. Must the reps be only commission-based? In some areas, the commission-only structure is a bit of a reach, especially in some European countries. This process still works if you use a blended structure - small base + commission.
Develop a hiring webinar & push through social channels & job boards.
Onboard at least 10 reps in your first batch to account for the fall out & limit the risk of false negatives (margin of safety, refine the best of the best, o-team only)
Charge people to work to help screening quality.
Once you have your reps, you need to ramp them. A salesperson who doesn’t know how to prospect is like a basketball player not knowing how to dribble the ball. It’s best to train reps on the fundamentals like outbound prospecting before closing, where prospecting is defined as the process of turning a cold contact into a qualified prospect through sending cold emails, cold calling, & cold social messages. Outbound prospecting is like door-to-door prospecting but we do this on the internet. Training reps on prospecting before closing ensures that if a closer ever needed to drum up their own leads & opportunities, they are able to do so and this results in a high efficiency of the sales organization at scale. The reps also learn to recognize & respect the value of your ad spent, content creation, events, etc. (as a marketer) on the inbound leads and their prospecting (as a sdr) effort on the outbound leads..
Typically, successfully ramping reps require one with great leadership skills to provide training manuals, conduct daily discipline, in-person meetings, facilitate in-person shadowing sessions, whisper or scream in the ears of reps daily to keep up motivation levels, etc. (all-in-one-stop platform). Managers & trainers often repeat themselves & waste time. This method is difficult, expensive, results in slow ramp times & produces inconsistent results and of course is location dependent, which in this era is a little big issue (majority of talent prefer to have a hybrid policy). When training and ramping is done through videos, the manager can use the “say it once” rule such that only new information or edge cases are presented to the recruits through video once by the manager. If the training material is good enough, reps ramp themselves without much communication with the manager. This results in extremely fast ramp times, relatively low investment from managers, consistent results, timezone, and location independent. It’s also extremely scalable and fun to manage once you get it going (all large enterprises (fortune 500 companies) do this).
The more detailed the training, the less continual effort is needed by management to ramp reps.
Another problem with managing a larger sales team is ensuring an accurate description of the prospect’s environment as it changes with time. What may be true for a prospect 6 months ago could not necessarily be true for a prospect today. A feed in which reps report insights and pose questions to the entire organization is useful to update the training and ramping material such that the training more accurately maps to the prospect’s environment. This increases the overall close rate of the sales team.
When a new question pops up or an edge case is found, a rep posts in the feed and it is visible and answered by everyone else so that only new insights are being addressed 24/7/365. How long does it take to successfully ramp a rep? If the training is good enough, reps can be ramped in only 1-2 weeks if solid training is provided to the reps.
Develop in-depth training to ramp reps on prospecting & sales (end-to-end). You can make this by yourself which takes a few weeks.
Use Slack or a G.Doc to field questions from reps & update your script at least weekly.
In an interview found on Youtube, Mark Cuban once compared managing a basketball team to managing a sales team as a cake walk. Most of us have never managed a pro basketball team, however, I suspect anyone who has managed a sales team can empathize with his sentiment. The traditional way of managing a sales team involves daily motivational and training sessions, constant monitoring, “therapy sessions”, whip cracks, and a whole other set of gymnastic moves required to keep young, high-energy guys or girls from wandering off to Vegas or Dubai when they cash their first big commission check. This outdated management process is frustrating, challenging, & typically only done successfully by rockstar, experienced sales managers. In a remote environment, it’s even more challenging since one can’t actually see the reps or monitor their daily activities. A better way to manage reps is to leverage an incentive structure & gamify the job with technology. Not only is this good for the rep since they earn more over the long term, but it’s also good for management since it makes the management process easy & fun. It also keeps morale high since reps can consider their job more like a sport.
Rep Chat (Ways in which to gamify the management process include: Allowing top reps to be “team leads” where a team lead is someone who answers questions, conducts morning meetings and is compensated a little for the entire team’s performance. Somewhat like a team captain. Reps doing “script wars” - the process where reps bounce objections and rebuttals off each other to encode the script and improve their pitch. Providing daily and weekly bonuses to stimulate activity. Populating a common slack channel with demo booking and closing notifications. Segmenting the whole squad into 2 teams that compete with each other).
As the team grows, it’s important to keep track of reps & their activities to ensure that the data being reported is accurate. Sloppy tracking will result in reps taking advantage of the system & efficiency of the sales team drops (literally, ripple-effect to the whole company). Instead of having many different areas where the data is displayed, it’s best to have 1, centralized place where you can easily see things and pick up trends. An example is using things like Chartmogul and spreadsheets that display the entire team data.
📈Will reps really work on commission? - Yes, the best reps will do whatever it takes to earn $200k-$300k per year. They understand the risk/reward relationship. These are the people you want. Someone who is just looking for a salary is not going to push to win business the way a superstar will.
📈How do you attract these people? - You need to show prospective reps what it looks like to work with you - show them the outcome and vision. Also, word of mouth travels fast once reps start making big bucks. If you can pay them well, you will never struggle to find good reps.
📈How long does it take to hire and ramp a rep? - It only takes 1-2 weeks to hire a rep from a standing start - 1 week for resume collection, 1 week for interviews and offers. Then it takes 1-2 months to ramp a rep up to profitability. Then 3-12 months for the rep to become ridiculously skilled and profitable.
📈How do you convince salespeople to work on commission? You will want to be the best salesperson yourself & demonstrate to the candidates that they can make a great income by copying you.
📈Can I hire an outsourced sales agency to do this? In theory, an outsourced sales agency sounds useful and cost-effective, however, in practice it is not. The reason why these outsourced sales agencies don’t work is because they lack the domain expertise needed to sell the product effectively and even charge an extra 15-20% as management fees. As a result, it takes longer for you to get any real traction with this method, and you are paying large upfront fees and management fees which erode any margin and spiral you out of the black. For this reason, we don’t recommend using outsourced sales agencies.
📈How do you compensate sales reps? We like to compensate sales reps on strict commission. This attracts the superstars and allows them to make extremely high incomes. We also have experience compensating reps with a base salary $50k-$80k + ⅓ of their compensation being commission. This structure works for when you are selling more complex deals to sophisticated buyers and you are unfamiliar with building a commission-based sales team.
📈When do you hire the sales team? You want to hire the sales team when you are able to overwhelm your calendar with qualified appointments. The reason why we don’t hire a sales team before this point is because if the sales team doesn’t have leads or appointments, they will be burning time and money. Commission-based sales people will want to know that you have your marketing solved or they won’t be attracted to your business.
📈Can you outsource the sales team? We have had clients who have tried to outsource their sales team, however, this is not a long-term solution and it often leads to extraordinary waste. Outsourcing sales is dangerous since you will be dependent on someone else for survival. A better strategy is to learn how to build a sales team in-house. Once you have this skill, you will be able to push any offer, any product, anything into the market and capture fabulous surplus.
📈Can I outsource the SDR role? You can outsource in some cases, however, it is in our experience that this method doesn’t work as well as bringing someone in-house. The reason is because sometimes the SDR will need to tweak the messaging and the assets to improve market-message resonance. If a firm is managing this process, there is often a delay - it could take 3-7 days for the firm to change assets, which is extremely inefficient. Also, some firms who outsource the SDR role bring on multiple clients per employee which allows them to make profit. This is great for them, but not for you since your outbound prospector will be working multiple accounts simultaneously and bandwidth will be spread which will decrease yield for you. The outsourced agency will often do the bare minimum of work and drive the bare minimum of appointments necessary to keep the retainer. If you hire in-house, you can drive up the efficiency and capture surplus. Another point is that if the outsourced agency is successful, you will opt to bring the outbound efforts in house to increase efficiency. It makes sense to start from this point to avoid any unnecessary transfer costs and load.
📈How much do I pay for a SDR? The typical compensation for an SDR is $40-$50k per year + 2-5% of commission. This incentivizes them properly. We will show you how to compensate your outbound sales team.
📈How long does it take to ramp an SDR? With our training and help, it will take you no less than 1 week to get an SDR ramped to full production. The key is mapping out a bullet-proof process that anyone can use and get results.
📈Does remote sales really work better than in-person sales teams? We found that they do. Commutes are silly. There is a set amount of nervous system and decision-making potential one can spend throughout the day, and if it’s spent navigating to work and back, listening to coffee machines, elevator dings, 1 hour commuting, gossiping with others, natural disaster, & other accidental events, etc. will resulted to unproductive work hours & negative performance during work hours. When reps work in a remote environment, they can completely eliminate the commute & other distractions that come along with the traditional bullpen environment which allows them to perform at extremely high levels. Learning how to manage reps is important & there are many training & development programs out there. We offer one that is current and is remote focus. Pro Tip: One problem with an outbound team is “outbound leakage” - the occurrence of outbound lead seeing an outbound prospector’s email & instead of replying to the prospector, the lead jumps over to the website to learn more, forgets about the outbound email and enters the funnel as if an inbound lead would. Without a proper way to account for this, outbound reps become unmotivated since they know that they won’t get comped for “inbound leads” that were actually a result of their outbound activities. A way to solve this is to introduce a rep tracking system in which each outbound rep is assigned an “agent_id” that is appended to links in their outbound emails. The agent_id is picked up by the funnel through a custom code “catcher” and attributed to that outbound rep who sent the email in the CRM.
📈What CRM should be used? We found Close.io to be most effective for teams under 50 reps. Split up a large team into two teams that compete with each other. Use tools like chartmogul and track lead source vs cash, and rep vs cash. Incentivise with daily and weekly bonuses. Use a common spreadsheet to track daily activity that is public to all reps.
📈When should you hire a sales manager? - When the process is solved and you have reps who are killing it - typically around 8 reps.
📈When do you hire a marketing manager? - When your message is solved and you need help executing the campaigns - updating creative, running analysis
📈When do you hire a customer support manager? - When you are swamped with customer support tasks and you are doing the same thing over and over again
📈When do you hire a product manager? - When you are already super-loaded and you can risk someone messing things up. The founders are usually the best product managers since they understand the needs the most.
📈When do you hire engineers or engineering managers? - When you need help building things and you hit your limit (either you don't have the skills, or you have sales calls you need to do)
So… It's impossible for me to cover everything precisely in detail because it will definitely take days or even months to explain the details but hey…
These are all the 10,000ft view outlines of variables that you must do and now you have a clear step-by-step process to rapidly scale-up your ARR by 200% (2X) to 1,000% (10X) Every Single Year:
From $0 to $100K ARR in 1 Year, then
From $100K ARR to $1M ARR in 1 Year, then
From $1M ARR to $10M ARR in 1 Year.
And Yes! We Guarantee You, as Our Partner, to at least 2X (200%) Your ARR Growth Every Single Year! You literally have nothing to lose, no excuse to procrastinate!
So… It's impossible for me to cover everything precisely in detail because it will definitely take days or even months to explain the details but hey…
These are all the 10,000ft view outlines of variables that you must do and now you have a clear step-by-step process to rapidly scale-up your ARR by 200% (2X) to 1,000% (10X) Every Single Year:
🦄From $0 to $100K ARR in 1 Year, then
🦄From $100K ARR to $1M ARR in 1 Year, then
🦄From $1M ARR to $10M ARR in 1 Year.
And Yes! We Guarantee You, as Our Partner, to at least 2X (200%) Your ARR Growth Every Single Year!
You literally have nothing to lose, no excuse to procrastinate!