# How to Build a Solo SaaS Sales Machine – Steli Efti – MicroConf 2015

Channel: Rob Walling
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PuKwEfXZqc
Duration: 57 min
Language: English
Words: 11792
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/8PuKwEfXZqc

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[0:00] [Music] [Music]

[0:15] all right so let's talk about sales right so first a little bit about my back room for the people who've never heard of me how many people don't know who the [ __ ] I am sree be proud oh my god that's the right level of humble pie I need to start a talk right nobody gives a [ __ ] about you nobody knows who you are that's right that's good there's still a lot more work to be done so for you people let me tell you just a little bit about myself so you know why you should care or listen to me or why you

[0:44] shouldn't so I've been an entrepreneur my whole life I'm completely unemployable of no credentials no college education or anything else so I am originally from Greece born and raised in Germany built multiple businesses there and all all self-funded I was just about to say bootstrap but Hinton is kicking my ass every time I say that self-funded is the new term so all self-funded businesses eight years ago I sold everything I had about a one-way ticket and I moved to Silicon Valley to start my first technology company and five years into that that turned into a massive catastrophe and there's lots of entertaining stories about that some public that I can share

[1:23] if you're curious but what I did three years ago is we started business called elastic sales and elastic sales what we did there basically is we offered SAS businesses specifically venture backed SAS businesses in Silicon Valley and outsourced sales team on demand so we would sell on behalf of you to customers and ramped up your sales process for you we did this for over 200 venture-backed startups and we became one of the best-kept secrets in Silicon Valley because nobody knew of our existence but we knew what everyone was doing in the b2b space and with a lot of companies that you know that became real big SAS

[2:01] success stories some little part of that success we we had a role in in terms of their sales scale and growing and and moving really really fast so we got a lot of exposure to everything that works and doesn't work and how it works and from the get-go from day one we build an internal little tool called quasi Oh a little sales a tool to allow us to do better close more deals make more sales and ultimately avoid the pain of using Salesforce or any other serum that was out there at the time all day long so we built a little internal tool we never intended to release that tool and we're

[2:37] kind of an interesting case study the sense that we went from a consulting and outsourcing business a services business to a software pure software business the whole thing with us is though that we didn't do this on intention like there was no strategy where we said we want this sweet sass money and we want this scalable stuff what happens was we built this internal tool it sort of become better and better and then eventually sale our salespeople would show our sales software to their sales people friends and go haha you can't have this right this is only for us and then we started getting salespeople giving us

[3:14] sales calls trying to sell us on the idea of us selling them our sales software alright once that happens it's a pretty strong signal in the market and then what happened was that a small group in our team started lobbying for us to release the sales software every single day I didn't want to do it I knew that we had an amazing product and I knew eventually we would release it but I was so busy running a services business that was growing that I really didn't want to launch another business in parallel but that's just a rule it's always true which is that the person with the highest level of clarity always

[3:48] wins and I was not as clear not wanting to launch that this person and the team wanted it to launch so at breakfast at lunch at dinner every [ __ ] meeting every [ __ ] day the person would be like when do we release the software we need to launch the product whenever we launch to the product we need to launch the product when are we launching the product until eventually wait I'll [ __ ] it alright this is a room you're four people three months launch I don't want to [ __ ] hear anything about it anymore and he was like I I didn't see

[4:14] him for three months and they released the software and as an entrepreneur I've been wrong my entire life about everything I can't think of one time in my life I wasn't wrong about something but once in a while very rarely I'm really happy I'm wrong and this was one of these cases I thought they would take forever for us to scale up to the revenue level that we had with the services business and it didn't like close I was a pretty big success from the get-go we were a very profitable business today and if you're doing inside sales to b2b companies you want to check out close

[4:47] that I'll check it out and let me know what you guys think all right enough of that I don't just release sales software and give sales advice I also launch baby boys so on the Left that's my oldest one we launched him two and a half years ago and then on the left on the yeah on the left on the right from your perspective it's my youngest when we launched him one year ago and you know we launched is you know it was more my wife that was the technical founder here I had more of a support and business development role in the whole relationship but those are

[5:23] my bosses there and the reason why I do what I do and I need to show off show them off whenever I can all right so let's first talk a little bit about salespeople right so most of you if you think about like sleazy douche-baggy salespeople you think of somebody who looks like me right now Rob save me add one more button up I didn't realize I did the whole like another old douchebag look but the role model that I want you to have when it comes to sales is this guy right this is one of my favorite salespeople you know and make no mistake in no room that

[5:58] Patrick ever walks in people turn around and go this must be a sales guy right nobody would ever mistake him for that but he's a [ __ ] sales hustler right I [ __ ] love Patrick because he understands a few things and if you understand these things you are a dangerous when it comes to sales he understands how to sell based on value right he understands how not to fizzle around about features and about pricing and cost he understands to truly know what the values he can provide and then refocus the conversation on that can I help you fix something what's the value that that represents in your life let's

[6:38] talk about that because that completely changes the equation and reframes the conversation completely differently the other thing understands is to truly qualify people this is something engineers really know well which is to ask questions until you arrive at a level of understanding that needs the minimal amount of interpretation possible right so you know a salesperson went down the call and and somebody goes well we need email marketing systems integrated in your tool do you have that the salesperson goes he said email yeah we do email right or the salesperson will go well what do you what would you need to buy our product and the the prospect goes

[7:17] well we really need something that does email marketing as part of your CRM sales solution the sales person will hang up and go to the engineering room and go hey do we do email marketing can we do email marketing what could we do in email marketing and then the engineer goes what do you mean by email marketing is it the [ __ ] newsletter drip email is it what what exactly email marketing is that everything and nothing oh I don't know I'll call the customer again cause the prospect what exactly did you mean with email marketing well we want to do drip based on what actions people

[7:47] take on our website okay cool let me check with our engineer who can do that I now know what they need they need drips based on actions people take on our website what kind of actions what's the exact thing they need what are they using today why what kind of technology would they need to integrate to their do they have engineers on the team like I can't give you any answer on that questions too generic which is why engineers are awesome at sales if they truly understood the power they have if you know how to ask questions to arrive at truly understanding the prospect all you have

[8:17] to do at the end of that is decide can I help this person or not the answer is yes you just have to tell them based on everything you said I can [ __ ] help you and here's how that's it that's all the sales education you need to be really really effective the problem is most people don't ask the questions most people start selling and they go we do this we do this we do this they throw darts in the dark and hope something will stick hopefully if I say 20 positive things about my product something is going to be in there that they like that's a waste of time that's

[8:45] really bad salesmanship you can be an amazing salesperson by asking the right questions qualifying people correctly and then if they if you can help them you tell them if you can't you tell them I can't help you and that's it one thing that Patrick learned recently that made it even more dangerous is how to follow up and speak about that later on but that's my religion that's the probably the single tires are I advice I give and today almost daily is somebody sending me an email telling me how they close deal raised around God press got married because they followed up indefinitely until they got a result yes or no and

[9:20] and Patrick sends me emails once in a while they're like oh [ __ ] steli i just closed this deal because i fall up seven times and i go oh my god that's not like he's my favorite my never get an email from patrick i'm so excited because it's gonna be some dearly closed or some [ __ ] awesome stuff he's done and he's not you're a typical sales person so you can be really dangerous in sales without fitting the mold of whatever your preconceived notion is what sales really entails all right let's get more tactical so a couple of things so this is gonna be i'm gonna try to share as

[9:49] many tactics when it comes to you've your small team or single founder how to build a sales machine one thing quickly to touch on is that content is not just for marketing content is also for sales if you content right it could be your invisible salesperson in the cloud and i was not aware of this myself i always thought of content as a marketing activity we do all the marketing we do at close i/o is all content marketing we out teach our competitors because we think we know more we don't think let me not try to attempt to be humble we know more about sales than any other company

[10:24] in our space so all we do is we try to educate people on sales the one thing i didn't realize i thought that's all that we do that so people know about us that build a relationship with us and then they discover our software and they become customers but one thing that we learned is that a lot of our customers buy our software they make a buying decision of the software before they know if the software can do everything they want based on the content we give them so person will sign up for trial they'll get the email course that i have they'll read a few blog posts and within

[10:56] the first two days they will decide the person will decide these people really [ __ ] know sales so i want to really know sales so i should better buy from them it really bumps our conversion numbers dramatically up in terms of our trial to two customers the other thing that's awesome all content is that it compounds it took me too to figure this out but just like SAS revenue you start and it's [ __ ] nothing you do it consistently for two years or twenty as some people and the you that little little [ __ ] compounds to a really massive amount of traffic and

[11:30] customers and sales so think of content as potentially a salespersons content that could convince people of buying your software that you're an expert that you your company is and your product is really the best tool to help them solve a certain problem let's talk a little bit about sales emails and I know you guys know a [ __ ] ton about emails so I'm gonna try to be focused on the things that might have not been covered as much to me emails are simple there's a it's a three-step process really a forth but whatever three steps somebody needs to open that [ __ ] read it and then respond that's it

[12:04] that's how I approach emails first I wonder what do I need a ride to make somebody open that email now you know a lot about like subject lines right you the subject line should not be all caps should not be read like it's written tour it's not a newsletter or something if it reads like it comes from a human being to human being is gonna get a lot higher open rates some hacks here sometimes I see people get better open rates when they have a misspelling in the subject line it's crazy you do something is weird or wrong it seems more human so people will respond to it

[12:35] with most humanity and open it right the and then there's and the other thing you need to be concerned about is that you can do a lot of hacks to make people open your email but you then want to deliver what you promised right it's again about starting off the relationship on the right foot so I had one of the most people ask me what's one of the most effective sales email subject lines you've ever gotten and I asked what's effective what is the definition of effective well you open it immediately I'm gonna tell you the most effective email in terms of me opening it immediately was a subject line that

[13:07] started really disappointed I opened my email inbox there's a [ __ ] 150 emails and i zoom in instinctive you really disappointed and the CEO of a business I'm like what did we [ __ ] up what did I [ __ ] up like what the [ __ ] right so I instantly open that with a very high level of intensity and urgency and the email continues so it's it started really disappointed and then it continues that we weren't able to connect yet our outsource blah blah blah and I go [ __ ] sees this sounds like that's brilliant awesome my god that was a great subject line delete [ __ ] you

[13:51] right if you want to trick me it's not gonna stop or somebody else had like a read you know when you do the read as if this is a reply to an email chain did the read and then starts off with like haha I used the rebut it's really a trick but I bubble by and I was like yeah delete right I mean I don't like you get me to open that's not all there is so but you want to do things not capitalize right like human beings short is good quick question is not deceiving if you really have a question if you're like quick question then your entire

[14:22] [ __ ] email is a pitch and you're you're an [ __ ] right you promised me something that you didn't deliver next thing is I need to read the [ __ ] so here's the way I think about copy in general but email copy in specific every sentence is a pitch for why should give a [ __ ] and read more and more sentence in this right now there's exceptions to this rule if your email is just two sentences it's harder not to read them to read reading your email is less work for me than you know having the cognitive energy to decide not to read

[14:54] yet these five letters so when something is short people will just read it but in general if you have a little bit more content you need to understand that you can't bury the lede you can't put the most important [ __ ] at the bottom you have to start with it every sentence neat and every sense at the end I need to go and why should I waste one more sentence of my life with this email and then I need to respond so you need to have one clear call to action just one you guys know this don't ask me for three things don't have a PDF attached a

[15:22] PowerPoint twelve links that you click and the question you have for me just don't make me work too hard right that's simple stuff for people that have SAS products and have people that are in trials you're not sending people enough email here here's the deal whatever amount of email you sent x to by the end of today and this conference was [ __ ] worth if a certain amount of people don't think you're spamming them you're not sending enough email you're not you're not don't optimize your business or not you know I'm not offending anyone on this planet like tena if if I get 3 out

[16:01] of 10 people to love me and I get them successful and seven out of those tend to hate me I'm okay with that I'd rather have that than have ten people that are equally indifferent about me and I have made no difference in their lives this is not a popularity contest this is about creating value so send more email in our trial people get seven emails during four 14-day trial and those emails are all personalized you know that it's gonna be like an account manager that reaches out and says hey I'm your comment if you have any questions let's chat a day later you get an email from me hey I'm the founder of

[16:35] the business I want to welcome you if you ever need anything few days later based on what you do you don't do in our product you'll get a few emails two days before the trial is over you get an email that asks you if you want an extension if we should chat at some point I'll send your really long [ __ ] email that tells you the entire history of humanity and parts of it our story it's a [ __ ] humongous email but converts really well for us we sent a ton of email in different formats and the reason why we do that is because we

[17:02] wanna communicate with you we want to start building a relationship and we take it as our responsibility to make you engage during the trial and all we try to do with the emails is get people to respond we've build a sales machine where we send a [ __ ] ton of email and all we want you to do is respond the moment you respond now you're part of our sales funnel and we'll jump on a call we're not maybe even not reply to your email if we think it's a big enough opportunity you respond with three questions next second you're getting a phone call from us and we'll answer

[17:29] those questions on the phone send emails always personalize you guys know that there's some hacks I don't even know if I want to do this anymore there used to be a time and some people do this accessory where you do where you do automated emails you can have a little like send via iPhone or something at the bottom again gets response rates up because it makes it more human makes it more real it's a little bit of a great thing but yeah but but that's it like most of this [ __ ] you guys already know so cold emails like if for people that don't do SAS trials if you want to

[17:56] start cold emailing people that don't already know about your business there's a book called predictable revenues written by a friend of mine Aaron Ross somebody knows it and they gave it two thumbs up and if you really want to do enterprise sales you should buy this book and read it just by predictable revenue and read it he developed this process where if you really wanted to go up in the enterprise he would try to find somebody that's a few levels above his buyer instead of trying to convince the buyer directly in the enterprise he would go two levels above the by it asking for a referral

[18:27] down so it'd be like hey CEO of the business I'm doing this in one sentence thing that's really valuable can you point me in the right direction who in the organization is the right person to chat briefly about this and then at thirty forty percent of the time if you write that email correctly the sierras negotiate so they'll just forward it to the right person which will then get you a call does me they'll buy but you'll know who the right person is that person will respond to your call much better process go from the top down versus the bottom up something worth exploring if you're doing enterprise sales if you're

[18:58] doing a lot of cold emails all right this is not this right oh yeah so let's talk about follow ups is my favorite thing here here's winning ninety percent of the time when I win it's because I follow up with nobody else's I have a simple fall of philosophy in life I never ever ever stop following up until I get a response you're my man yeah I don't know we you sit at the right point like I get all the love that's awesome here's the thing here's the the basic philosophy right most people think that silence equals rejection and that's wrong that simple as that I'm not a mind

[19:40] reader if we have a positive interaction with a call with a meeting something if you say yes your products really good I really want to test it I'll really want to have another call something and then you go silent on me I'm not gonna make up a story why that is I said you want email I don't hear anything a second I don't hear anything a third I don't hear anything I'm not then gonna go she really hates me he thinks I'm ugly like I'm not gonna make up stories what's happened right I'm just gonna keep falling up my assumptions always you got busy you have another life I'm not

[20:10] universe you got busy my job is to manage this relationship is it's important to me it's my responsibility to keep up and keep following up until something happened and there's many stories for me you know we raised a [ __ ] ton of money from a billionaire investor and it took only 48 follow-up emails after he said yes to meeting us to then get the meeting you know I got a press article the other day on TechCrunch and it only took nine months and 12 emails to different people pitching that article until somebody responded and said yeah this is great like no [ __ ] it's great I know I've been

[20:44] pitching it to you for nine months all right I just this magic there's magic happens when you follow up because that's where everyone else drops the ball you're the only person in the race like this the race starts really crowded everyone wants to get started and show up and do the first pitch and send the first email and if the first call everybody's like it's so crowded so competitive but then after a little while when it requires a second or third follow up you're alone now you can walk as slowly as [ __ ] you're going to win you know and every day I get some case study we're gonna

[21:18] I'm gonna write a specific book just about follow up trust me this [ __ ] works right just keep falling up relentlessly and magic will happen in your life there's only one thing that kills companies it's not success or failure it's not a yes or no that's gonna kill you when it's in sales the thing that's gonna kill you is the maybe it's the I don't know what the [ __ ] is going on with this deal that's what's [ __ ] company's careers lives that's what I [ __ ] hate I can deal with the know you replying you tell me [ __ ] off

[21:49] I'll leave you alone that's a result right I can deal with results but when there's nothing and I have to came up with stories that's where really bad things happen and I'm gonna give you a hack that you know that speaks against falling up endlessly but it's something if you want to do follow-up its scale is might be a tactic that you want to use or if you think I'm wrong it's called the break-up email so here's what you do and lots of big companies do this really successfully is you send a bunch of emails and you don't get any response and eventually instead of doing what I

[22:21] say with big important things investors large accounts whatever it is that you want to do what you do at some point you send a breakup email the break-up email basically says hey I've been trying to get in touch with you for [ __ ] ever I'm just gonna have to assume that you don't care about this if you I'm gonna take you off my list I'm gonna delete you from my list of people I need to get in touch with here's all my contact information if you ever want to talk about this I'm I'm excited goodbye forever for my side though that email is incredibly effective I'll give you two quick

[22:57] examples this is hot spot so I got four emails from hot pot salespeople once I sign up for the trial the first four were all like hey I'm your account manager hey how can I help you the third one was like hey I have a discount coupon and I only have two and one is already spa whatever like all kinds of [ __ ] and then I always was like you know archive archive archive and then this email that was basically I'm taking you off my list I responded to it but no no no I'm interested I just didn't have time right and if you email

[23:28] me steli at close I'll give you all my slides and everything else you want except my children so the other thing is that this is a this is another coming this is trunk club this is an end consumer product it's the exact same [ __ ] thing at the exact same [ __ ] time first hey I'm your stylist I'm your car manager hey with this discount code bubble Bob this and that I don't reply forth emails like goodbye from us I responded to that email it's a very very effective email you take something away from people they'll snap into action even if it is I will stop you will stop

[23:59] hearing from me people like no no no I want to keep hearing from you all right the other thing that I want to highlight so this is about emails now let's talk a little bit about you demonstrating your product if you would be to be and you have to do sales calls and demos here's a few things you need to do stop wasting everybody's time your demo your product demo is a demonstration of value not of features it's a sales call not a training call I see this all the time 60 minute demos where the person goes hey I'm not going to show you everything I

[24:32] know about my product and then they'll go into details that are painful like and here's where you can you know update some information let me do that and then they update the [ __ ] information around it from you and then they'll push the button that says update and they'll say update and then the spinny really spins and they go and now the information is up it really really do I need to sit here and watch you click the [ __ ] Update button like really is that what you want to demonstrate like just get to the [ __ ] point qualify me understand what I care about what's the

[25:04] problem I have what is the thing I need and give it to me demonstrate how your product is going to deliver the value or is going to be the solution to my problem and then stop demos need to be seven eight nine minutes and then you give them a few minutes for questions that's it they won't remember anything anyways if you do anything that's longer than 10 minutes demonstrating a product don't clickety-click around just go this is the page where you do this this is the page where you solve this problem and here's the thing that's gonna change your life does that sound fair what's your

[25:35] questions right that's it don't don't don't go into and let me go into settings and change the avatar like what the [ __ ] and I see this consistently CEOs people are very successful very junior people everybody thinks must be 60 minutes of me talking don't do that also when something goes wrong and it always goes wrong don't be rattled by that [ __ ] you should expect it something will go wrong here's what we do when things go wrong and we do a product demo we go this is the perfect opportunity to show you how to deal with problems right so I got an error message in the app

[26:07] right what should you do when this happens you go up into the writing closeout you click on support chat you know that that chat room goes directly into our engineering room let's do that together right now see you see that chat room hey engineers I'm doing a demo with this company and we just got this error message how do we fix this and I demonstrate how to solve the problem versus being like oh it's an error message oh this never happens let me refresh the app or [ __ ] I just lost my internet well hmm well let me call it you people you wait and try to Comcast

[26:41] and try to fix this [ __ ] problem no you just need to move on with life expect it turn around embrace the [ __ ] that happens and go and when [ __ ] happens here's how you deal with it all right if you're Comcast you know Fox you call us and we'll call them for you whatever you want to do but don't get rattled by that all right here's some some more advice how am i doing on time can somebody give me some kind of approximation okay oh that's great because I have a great story I want to end and as much time as I can get for

[27:14] that the better all right so let me finish with a last thought that I think hopefully is useful to some of you guys and that's how to build a free sales team I get build a massive sales team without hiring anyone or paying anyone anything right so that might be interesting for some solo founders here's how I want you to think about a virtual sales team anyone and everyone you know is now part of your sales team I am part of your sales team if you're smart enough to make me so and here's what I mean by that like my my I've two older brothers my middle brother when he

[27:46] was five years old you know came home one day you know we had a neighbor she was there at our place having having dinner with us and our neighbor asked my brother hey you know Nick do you have do you have a girlfriend yet you know my mom and her were laughing and you would expect my brother's pretty shy you would expect him to be like super like that's why she asked him like super to red in his face and everything but my brother was like yeah just kept eating and my mom and the neighbor was like really really you ever give a girlfriend what's her name my brother's like I for they're

[28:22] like and my our neighbors like for your four girlfriends really and my mom is like wait wait do they know they're your girlfriends and my brothers like No this is exactly the same deal here so your customers your customers can be your extended sales family they actually have to they have to every person that buys from your the buys from you could be part of your sales family there can be your lead generation team here's what I mean by that ask for referrals when I close a deal I'll close the deal I'll go all right now that we got this amazing amount of value that's gonna be created

[29:01] on both ends who else do you know that you like that should know this exists here's what happens 9 out of 10 times the person will go ah I need to think about this and this is where most people leave it alone you go ok again back to the old things you don't want to be an [ __ ] you don't want to inconvenience people but this is business this is not about being liked so here's what I do when somebody tells me I need to think about it I'm like I want you to think about it every day any day for the rest of your life but just for right now

[29:28] one name just one person you really like come on one name help me out here yeah out of the nine that said no four or five will say alright this is a name just because I noted them one more time the rest in a nice or not so nice fashion will tell me really [ __ ] off I said I need more time and then I'll I'll back off I'll say hey I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't bother you one more time it's fine I totally I'm excited about it once you get a referral from a customer you need to get referrals from customers

[29:57] once you get it and it works out and they become a customer the moment they become a customer you need to ask them who do we have to thank for this [ __ ] like who do we have to thank for this deal happening and they always look at you're like you do it do I have to thank you know who got us in touch in the first place Bob right oh yeah cool can you do me a favor let's write Bob a thank email right now so he knows you and I appreciate it I'm sorry I'm writing it right now please do the same the moment the initial referrer gets two

[30:27] emails from both sides saying this was amazing you know what happens you get more [ __ ] referrals now you turn this into an engine a process something that can help you grow sustainably and repeatedly your business versus something you ask you know in a shy fashion and then you run away when they when they cuff or something right so referrals get more great leads from your best customers if you have a customer you don't like don't get referrals from them he'll give you more that type of customer but if you have really successful customers get more of these kind of referrals from them also when

[31:01] you tried to close really big deals use your customers as a virtual sales person that helps you close the deal at the final stages not at the beginning you don't want to burn them out as a resource but when things are really hard eventually you want to get interest with a customer you love and have great relationship with you go hey it'd be awesome I'm trying to close this big company and I know they totally respect and love you they appreciate you there they're very aware of your brand and everything you guys have accomplished it would mean so much if you could send them a quick email letting them know how

[31:33] your experience was or asking them hey would it be fine for me to put them in touch with you and you just jump on a 5-minute call tell them how your experience was authentically you don't tell them to say nice things you know they're gonna if you choose the right customer you just tell them can you make yourself available to help me with this and if you do that correctly it's gonna make all the difference in closing really big deals and the other thing is if you do it correctly and you don't burn your customers out on this only do it when you think you can't close the

[32:00] deal if the customer gets a really strong referral if you do that the customer will start getting more positive reinforcement that they're on a winning team every time they talk to a prospect you week later you go back to them and you go hey they became a customer when they become a customer you tell them hey you remember when you talked to John who's a customer of ours was that helpful to you yeah if it was helpful can you send them a quick thank you email tell me if you're a customer now - all of a sudden their own team winning and they're like yeah I want to

[32:25] talk to more people about why we're winning with this product because every time I talk to somebody they turn to a customer it's a great feeling you need to be really resourceful and turn anyone and everyone you know as part of your extended sales family now that you know me and you have my email address anytime you're in negotiation with a big deal a small deal or any deal and you need help or advice anything else send me an email what's the worst thing that can happen I'll ignore you right purposefully because I want to see if you follow up and then you send me another email and

[32:58] I'll go [ __ ] yeah because the aren't you are the type of people I can't say no to I say no to so many awesome people investors every day no [ __ ] you you know big partnerships from a big corporation they'll [ __ ] you but when an entrepreneurs like I as struggle can I get your time you know it's hard to say no because those are my people that have been that person so make everyone in a one part of your extended sales family alright here's the story I want to end with so this is Flavio Flavia is a really really good friend of mine Flavio

[33:27] is originally from Switzerland computer science grad entrepreneur he built a few startups that didn't go anywhere and then he built one startup in Switzerland that he sold for millions and millions of dollars he's today what you would call a growth hacker he's an engineer he can cope but he's more on the marketing side of things and the other day he came to a sales workshop I gave and he was setting up the camera and I was joking this is the most overqualified camera man cuz the only guy in this room who sold the company for millions and millions of dollars that's how I roll and and at the

[33:59] end of the sales thing he comes to me and he goes you know what I'm really pumped on this sale [ __ ] I should do a sales internship with you man actually just kind of just can I be your junior sales guy for a month and I was like oh that's a pretty cool idea let's sleep over this and see if we're still excited about it tomorrow so the next day we go yeah alright we'll do this sales internship hustle internship multi-millionaire startup founder is gonna [ __ ] intern as a sales junior sales guy for me kind of cool all right let's do it and I really like him we

[34:25] were really good friends so he starts his internship on day one he starts making calls calling you signups for closed i/o welcome them to the trial qualifying them doing all that good stuff and I hear a few of his calls and do you know when you had an expectation and you trusted somebody deeply and then your heart is broken and you know it was the wrong decision I hear him on the first two calls and internally I'm dying externally I'm like good job buddy everything all internally I'm [ __ ] dying I'm like oh my god he's so bad how can he be so bad at this

[35:04] like I've talked to him before here's a loud guy and everything like how is he so nervous and so he was horrible on day one three days later I was like oh my god can't believe how good he became like I can't believe how [ __ ] awesome he is on the phone he had the biggest turn-on from like horrible to amazing in just a few days it was it was exceptional the cool thing is he credits all this to me so it's gonna have one guy he's running around telling every founder he knows that he needs to be an intern with our company but he became really good really fast

[35:35] right but here's a really cool example a story and what I want to share his in the attitude that you should apply to your lives and to your businesses so they ate on his hustle internship he calls new trials our trial goes for 14 days it causes people the purpose of the call is to qualify to help them with answers figure out why they came to us how what they're looking for see if there's a real opportunity that we need to focus on or if they're the wrong type of customer we need to point them in a different direction it's all they good early stuff so he calls and

[36:09] you sign up in the morning and he qualifies them he goes through all that question and he figures out yeah I think we would be really the right solution for you guys now oh no sorry this is not even trial this is somebody filled up a contact form right so we got a contact request about some information about our product and he calls them to qualify them they have not signed up for trial yet so he calls them he qualifies them and at some point they start with objection well but what about this what about that and someone they're like well but sales forces all these integrations

[36:39] it is like why did you need integrations what kind of integrations what do you how do you do things today like yeah and then again I mean we're not really using integrations but eventually we're like five sales people if we want to scale to five thousand then we worry about this specific integration and at some point he goes alright buddy there's a reason this is not called [ __ ] around that IO but close that IO if you want to [ __ ] around just go to Salesforce right but if you want to close [ __ ] deals let's move on with life here and let's not

[37:10] worry about these things the person with the other line starts laughing ha ha ha you're so funny blah blah blah alright alright you know everything there is to say okay we're gonna do it they hang up cool I heard that line we all got really entertaining the company company Chad we try to buy [ __ ] around on Io they didn't sell it to us you know the Indian Ocean thought this is probably improper you know what they're gonna do some bad things on that URL website so they said no to us trying to buy it so we're all wet a lot of fun in the coming really

[37:42] this is such a cool line and everything and then a few hours later here's another call scheduled with a co-founder of that guy so they jump on another call and he does a demo with him right so he does the demo and there's a bunch more questions and at the end of the call he goes I I see you still haven't started the trial it stopped the trial guys let's get going let's I really want to champion you I really want to have you start making calls closing deals you let's do this and they're like yeah alright we'll sign up within the next hour and then with where

[38:10] questions we'll get back to you cool hangs up 9:00 p.m. we go for dinner we come back to the office 9:00 p.m. we're chit-chatting and he goes oh let me check if they sign up for trial and he checks is like [ __ ] they still haven't signed up for the trial and like yeah you know this is how people are blah blah blah I am the aggressive sales person the guys like I'm calling them and I and I'm like alright I'm not gonna say anything about this if you want to call him call him so he calls them he's like dude I just came back from dinner

[38:40] with steli the father of the business I tell them all about you guys and I and there's no truck why haven't you saw the port well yet and the guy goes well you know we have this questions about this integration how to get all our data migrated into it and we really didn't want to use up a day of our 14 days free towels so we really wanted to wait till we have everything figure it out and father goes you you can't stop [ __ ] around can you you just can't right and the guy starts laughing because I okay I'll sign up for trial and floppies like

[39:10] [ __ ] yeah you are right now let's do it and the guy goes alright I'm signing up for trial did you see yep I see your trial all right awesome so let's get your data and then finally does so all this is like just being like you know whatever being aggressive being from boring being like a hustler and all that now he does everything that a normal sales person would do to make them successful he doesn't just go out trial my job is done he goes all right rock let's hit your data into this the guy in port tried to desert data import gets an error message screen

[39:41] share you know father D bugs the [ __ ] gets gets the fossa vs file makes the columns be correct 35 minutes 10 p.m. at this point 45 minutes gets all their data in right now then he gets their data and he goes I buddy let's check the the guy clicks on a random lead and one thing we do really well as we integrate email communication automagically so when you put in a lead in close io a few seconds later you see all the historic email threads you had with them in our product already and we can give you data and analytics on that so the guy it looks at

[40:08] the lead and then sees the the email threads pop up it because wow this is awesome Prabhas like do you think that's awesome let's do something else let's go to the lead patron close IO and now I want you to type this into the search bar show me all leads where the last thing that happens they got an email from us they didn't reply it's been longer than two weeks ago and the guy selects all these options and from the 500 leaf they get it goes down to 43 leads and flowers like do you know what this means and the guy goes I need to [ __ ] get in touch

[40:39] with these 43 companies so he's like right are you ready to buy right now is like yes [ __ ] let's do it I can't put my credit card

[40:52] all this magic and literally I was sitting there I was just like wow this is awesome one day close turnaround you know they didn't get to really trial anything that's the magic when you stop [ __ ] around right sales sales at the end of the day is you being the most decisive person in the room once once you really truly convinced that you can help them it's your responsibility it's your duty it's your to be your religion to make them successful with your product all right you want a hustle internship or look to join a kick-ass ass team we're just six people were tiny we're

[41:30] profitable we're growing insanely we're kicking ass ha nearest competitor is 150 people we're kicking their ass every [ __ ] day so let us know and if you want me to be part of your extended sales family just shoot me an email to steli at closer dial thank you so much I [Applause] am my name is William I'm with green ratio um first of all thank you for your advice about 10 minutes ago we had a potential trial customer that I just said okay well I'll give them another two weeks to wait for sign up while you're talking and I sent them an email and about two minutes later they signed

[42:11] up so thank you and this is why this conference is awesome like you're awesome send me an email about this I feel like I want to go make a cold call or something I'm all done ice le thanks for your talk in the motivation I think everybody here needs to follow up more and I'm the first most guilty of this I've got six months old leads that I haven't touched but anyway that confession aside your title is you sorry your presentation is titled solo SAS sales machine how does this change for non SAS products when you don't have trials when you just have software when you have volume licensing customers that

[42:55] you're nagging to buy your stuff you're dealing with enterprise you're dealing with budgets and you know how it is how does this change philosophically it's the same thing there's some different tactics there's different things you need to anticipate you need to have a different customer lifetime value you need to have a different you know approach and patience in how much time it takes to get something done but the end of the day you're always selling to human beings you're always selling to people there's no IBM that can buy software there's only [ __ ] people working for IBM so once you understand that once you made that mental shift you

[43:28] realize the complexity that comes with enterprise sales is that you're not just convincing one person and need to understand their needs and their problems you need understand twenty people's problems and needs and they are all conflicting and they all not are perfectly aligned with the overall needs of the business so I mean there's a lot of technical differences but in an approach in philosophy it's very similar stuff with enterprise sales you have a you have to follow very religiously you have to manage the entire process all the way to the pilot and after the pilot and everything you need to tell them what to do at every single step when it

[43:59] comes to negotiation you need to know what your price is and what the values that you provide lots of a lot of these things are in universal but tactically maybe there are some differences thank you very much hey I just wanted to echo you on persistence I had a twenty thousand dollar deal close six months emailed them every two weeks finally closed and you're right on the money follow-up you get it done don't go free to follow up here's a question do you map out your follow-up emails like hey here's email one two three four or do you just fly it depends it depends so when it's automated you map it out so

[44:33] for people to sign up for trials there's certain follow-ups that we're doing they're all automated and mapped out personally if and this you know if I if there's a big deal and I want to close the deal I don't map it out I just do it you know I make sure that I have a system in place that reminds me that a week or two have passed nothing has happened so I keep doing things and there's all kinds of cool things on our blog if you go to blog that's closed or I oh there's a [ __ ] ton of information also on follow up you can go put some funny in your

[44:59] follow up I learned like using really funny gifts like a cookie monster that's waiting right after you like four or five emails you don't get anything back to send them awaiting Cookie Monster that goes you know now people will respond they will laugh right there's all kinds of cool little things you can do but yeah I don't map it out in whenever I do it personally I just by God who else uh you mentioned making your customers part of your extended sales team up and making them feel part of that sales team do you ever offer them any sort of reward or affiliate relationship no so I don't I personally

[45:42] don't pay for referrals now that's different if you're and then consumer up like Dropbox or a bunch of other apps you can do some like affiliate referral magical things do but in b2b when I'm talking to somebody that's the CEO of a business I'm not gonna offer them some small shitty thing or a little bit of money it's gonna devalue the referral now sometimes people ask me and they say hey if I bring you this customer will I get something and I'll tell them once I got the customer yeah well we can figure something out but but usually I don't offer something pract I would never

[46:15] offer something proactively the value proposition here is you're getting value your success will wells do you know you like that should also know this exists and that's you providing information and giving somebody something of value not being selfish I find that that's gonna make less people excited about it hey steli good stuff I'm curious what your thoughts are methodology for hiring salespeople I've rejected salespeople before just to see if they actually follow up nice yeah that's not bad so methodology facility so this is actually interesting I would have I have a lot more I have a lot of content around sales hiring and I was surprised

[46:59] how many people were asking me about sales hiring stuff because it didn't fit my solo sales machine theme of the presentation but I have [ __ ] to give you I have a lot of videos a lot of presentations around that but my basic philosophy on the hiring part is that you cannot ask a question to know somebody's gonna be good at sales it's like saying what is the question you're gonna ask to know if somebody's a really amazing basketball player like somebody yesterday told me how tall are you not bad not bad but that doesn't exist the equivalent of that doesn't exist for sales so the thing is sales is

[47:32] a performance so you need to see the person perform so you need to make them sell so I would get that person if somebody interviews with my company that person has to do sales calls the first [ __ ] day when they interview they have to pitch our CTO they have to pitch our intro they have to pitch everybody on anybody if they're not comfortable with that then then then that's fine we're all everybody's nervous but I want to see how do they deal with that I do they have a little bit of a hustle to like it or how do they overcome the nervousness the other thing is when it comes to

[48:01] sales people I've interviewed a lot of salespeople some people think I know a lot about sales and I would never say when I hire somebody the first day I would never say I hired an amazing sales person because I don't know it takes me three months to know if somebody is really gonna be good at sales because what makes the difference between somebody being ok at sales and being truly great is consistency right can they bring it every [ __ ] day that's the hard thing about sales every morning you show up and doesn't matter if you had a fight with your wife your children hate you or whatever you have to bring

[48:34] it today doesn't matter if yesterday was a great day you have to bring it again today does matter if it was a bad day every day it's hard most people don't want to or can't do this the ones they do you want to hold on and never ever in your life let go of them right these people are amazing other questions we have time for a couple more

[49:07] if you don't get a response to the break-up email do you stop or keep going honestly I'm not sending the break-up email so I don't know oh yeah I mean I just showed you HubSpot and and trunk club are doing it if you ask me for my opinion not my experience no if I tell you something in an email again it's part of our relationship if I say you'll never hear from me again I usually will follow through if I don't I need to make it fun now that I think about it I might follow through but it depends he needs to be it better be

[49:37] something good and then I would have to start with a email saying alright you got me I was bluffing right this is all just a joke if you haven't seen the email don't read it right now that we got that out of the way let me tell you why I'm emailing you today or you could do you need to address it you can't just ignore the fact that you told me something and then you're acting completely differently maybe you send me an email you say listen usually I would not break my promise here's why I decided to do it today I told you I would never send you an email I'm

[50:06] breaking the promise I feel horrible about it let me tell you why I decided to do it anyways now you better you now you got my attention I'm intrigued all that good [ __ ] but now you better have something interesting to say right so make sure you can deliver on that promise but yeah I don't have exact experience myself I don't know but the most companies I'd use the break-up email use it for all use it in an automated fashion for really high-volume software they can't have every single rap to follow ups indefinitely with every single lead any more questions Araceli so just scenario so thousand

[50:40] outbound emails with one of my sales person people all customized that converted into about ten demos and you know five sales okay so turning through outbound emails you know outbound leads pretty quickly and I'm wondering if I'm just doing it wrong we should have started with just outbound calls first so you did a thousand cold emails yourself you said something I didn't catch the second part so like ten damn I turn it about ten memos about ten what ten demos okay thousand emails ten demos is that just you how many people did it take to send a thousand emails ah just one guy just one guy how long using closure by the

[51:18] way huh using clothes aiyo okay so you did it in bulk Li you did it about a week oh wait I do enough 70 emails a day all right so you you it took you a week to send a thousand emails to people you got ten demos out of it and six closed yeah five closed so far yeah what is a deal worth to you so about three year and a year or two ninety seven a month so three grand a year so this is like fifteen six no this is yeah this is fifteen eight this close to twenty K worth of value to you but in

[51:48] the math right I think so yeah four weeks worth of work not bad yeah so it's it's I guess you're concerned that you're running through I'm just concerned that it was a great pop because we're reaching obviously that's a high closing ratio for a ten demos yeah so I think we're reaching only the most you know highly qualified or highly intent you know people here's what I would do if I were you those six that bought yeah did you ask them why did you open my email why did you respond to my email how do you typically buy [ __ ] who else do you know that similar to you that

[52:26] should know we exist did you really get more than just the sales but you got a lot of insights above yeah I mean we do a great job of just like understanding you know what their intent was but we do not do a good job of saying like what are your other buying habits also also the thousand people where they're all exactly the same or whether within a range yeah there's a range so we had some warm follow-up from a previous product that was old much higher like a twenty thousand dollar you know purchase price and I did some you know UTM parameters for all that so our open rate was like

[52:57] you know astronomically higher on the warm follow-up versus the cold follow-up but they did turn into sales so what did they turn into a high percentage of the sales that yeah the warm was much much much higher how many of the six were from the warm actually well the warm turned into more demos but it was actually the 50/50 zero yeah no fifty-fifty close no cold cold or so so here's what I would tell you not to make this too long we can chat later but you need to separate what you did with the warm list from the really cold list okay everything you do now upon you really

[53:32] you really need to segment and separate and to look at the results in a fashion that's not convoluted and like a million different things happen at once and then with with the because it took a lot of leads to get to these results I think the results are good to begin with right when you do a pond stuff it's high-volume it's just the name of the game now if there's hundreds of millions of these type of leads you might be in good shape if there is 3,000 of them you're in [ __ ] right you can't do this for more than another two weeks so 10,000 all right so now now what you

[54:01] need to do is we need to segment the since it's a small list overall the complete list in humanity that you can reach is just like five or ten thousand people you need a segment that list and write a lot more targeted emails to these people and do a lot more targeted things to get the max more air I great we have time for one more question over here what do you think about switching tracks so like when I follow up with people I've found I to send them something physically like when I can't get get them to respond but are there other ways and and what do you think

[54:30] about sending like mailing out and things like yeah there's a million creative things you can do I think of these things as black belt in follow up so as long as you haven't as long as you have mastered the basics and fob which is just sent [ __ ] 30 follow-up emails right don't worry about mad the magical things you can use humor you can do physical objects gifts you can send them articles so that's so overused I get all these people sending me articles I care not to shits about and they're like oh I found this article that's really important for you and you can tell this

[55:02] is they've done this at scale this article if they're truly new I am they would know I don't give a [ __ ] about so you need to be careful with these things but you can try to be helpful give a gift as creative things but we got a billionaire to invest long time ago there it for the 48 emails it took me to get that done they were not creative at all here's what they were hey another beautiful day in paradise he is we released this new feature when can we meet this Thursday or Friday at this or this time didn't hear anything next week

[55:29] hey another beautiful day in paradise did you see this article on our company when can we meet this Thursday I have time from this to this time didn't get anything back hey another beautiful day in paradise let me ask you can you do this Friday that's it though and then after 48 emails he his reply was I'm so glad you follow up so I'm so sorry there was a big thing overseas that was traveling can you come tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. I'm gonna be in the office in San Francisco so even in lack of creativity you can get [ __ ] done don't be needy don't reference back to the

[56:02] original email oh I send you three emails why am you replied don't make me feel bad or guilty you'll never get a reply for me right just keep it clean simple friendly and move on with life in terms of all the ninja stuff we can talk about that can send you some cool stuff but I don't want people to start thinking oh this is my third follow-up email I better send them a [ __ ] book you know that I know they always wanted to read but they mom didn't allow them a chat like let me do some 3-month research to send them a gift just keep

[56:33] it simple just keep following up if you just you just follow up at least 20 times as everyone magic will happen in your life that's it thanks telly thank you so much guys you [Music]

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