How I Designed Our High Touch Sales & Onboarding to Run Without Me – Brian Casel – MicroConf 2015

0:17Okay, so inbound sales on autopilot. That's that's what I'm talking about here today. Um, for those of you I haven't met yet, uh, I'm Brian Casel. I co-host the Bootstrapped Web podcast with uh, with Jordan Gal. He'll actually be speaking right after me. Um, last couple of years I've been running a site called Restaurant Engine, which is a SaaS kind of productized service web design service for restaurants. And I currently teach a course called productize about uh, building a productized service, productized consulting um, uh, model. So last year on this at MicroConf I did an attendee talk about Restaurant Engine, talking about

0:59content marketing. Um, and how we've built our inbound organic traffic steadily over time. And that's really how we've uh, grown the the business is is through, you know, consistent content, email courses, um, and that sort of thing. And and I talked about how I kind of removed myself from that process and and outsourced it and delegated it. Um, my talk here today is is kind of the the next step of that is how do we convert this inbound organic traffic into customers, into sales for for Restaurant

1:30Engine. But my goal since day one of starting Restaurant Engine was to build something that can ultimately run without me. Um, I I really wanted to see if I can build something that can basically run on autopilot and become an asset that that either runs in the background or, you know, can become uh, a sellable asset that that I can leverage. Um, and as as the years went on in building Restaurant Engine, I I learned that it's the done-for-you service and and the high-touch activities, whether it's the content marketing, our consultations and sales, which I'll talk about in a second, um and our customer support and and

2:10done-for-you onboarding, uh and and even as I learned that and and that's what provided the value in this business, I still worked to remove myself and systematize it and automate it as as much as I possibly can. So, here is a look at uh an iPhone, and this is the notification that I receive when a new customer comes to Restaurant Engine, signs up, and pays our setup

2:34fee. And right here, this is the only touch that I see when a customer comes through our system, um through our marketing, through our sales, signs up. Now, they're being handed off to the customer support team. They're onboard onboarding the customer. When I get this ping on my phone, I don't even need to get it. I I could turn it off if I wanted to, but I but I

2:56like it. It has a a little sound on it. This is this is like "Cha-ching!" you know. Um so, that's one notification I don't really want to turn off. Um but when that happens, that it represents that the the system has worked. That that somebody came to our site a couple of weeks ago, requested a consultation, somebody from

3:14our team called them up, followed up. Um they that lead was nurtured. They signed up. And now, they're being handed off automatically to the team to set up their new website. But, it wasn't always like this. For the first few years of this business, it was generally all me. I was I was doing all the customer support. Basically, that happened in my Gmail inbox. I was the one doing all of these consultation calls. I'd spend 4 or 5 hours every single day calling up customers. I was on the live chat, you know, answering questions, um just kind of hustling and and clawing my way into the the first

3:51few customers in this in this business. Um but about 15 months ago, my my daughter came along and I had to slip this this slide in in the presentation today, but that's when it really it became real for me that I have to remove myself from this business because my time is very much limited um and you know, that that was coming around, you know, about 2 years ago. Uh so that's when I really got serious about building these systems and and

4:19automating. So, I'm going to talk about the four main components of our inbound sales system and that's basically the the initial consultation, our CRM, how we organize leads, uh our follow-up and how we nurture leads and and get them to ultimately sign up, and then the onboarding to um bring them on board and

4:38manually set up their site. And let's get into it. So, here is a video demo that we do. Uh it's it's 25 minutes long. It's recorded. It's on the site. And my goal here was just to um try to educate customers as much as I can before we get on a phone call with them um and try to answer some of the most common questions that that we've received. So, I did about a year or two of consultation calls before I came out with this

5:07uh video demo. Um so, I I I really collected all those common questions and and tried to cover it in this in this 25 minute It's an extended, you know, pretty long video for someone to sit through, but um we get plenty of leads who come in and and want to learn as much as they can. They They already see the pricing and everything. So, they're we try to qualify them as much as as much as possible by the time they get into a consultation. They can request the consultation right alongside that that video, um but not not everyone who comes to our website are video people, you know, they don't a

5:40lot of restaurant owners don't want to sit through a a long video. So, we also have a dedicated uh form on our website uh to request a consultation. And actually, as you'll see, it's it's quite a few questions. Um so, we're asking for a lot of information here. We're asking for their phone number. We're asking for their email address. Um asking them about their restaurant. Are they a food truck? Are they interested in online ordering? And and we're getting all this

6:02information. Um And so, that too kind of you know, a a little bit kind of qualifies them and and you know, they're they're not just kicking the tires. They're actually going to fill out this form. Um From there, the form actually brings that person into our CRM automatically. And we actually use Trello for this. Um I just found that it's the most uh flexible uh solution for us. And and it it's easy for us to integrate all of these different pieces. Uh we connect it with Zapier. So, when the the person fills out the the consultation form, uh it creates a lead uh a card in Trello. And all of this

6:38lead's information is in is automatically inputted into uh the description of the card. Um I I use some some markdown to kind of format it. And and here we have, you know, their name, their restaurant name, email, phone number, um uh you know, what did they say that they were they were interested in, like which features and and whatnot. Um So, I have a a sales person on on my team who goes in every day and and sees these these new leads and you know, so she'll call up every new lead as typically same

7:09day, sometimes, you know, the next day. Um And she will write comments on the card after every interaction so that we can understand, you know, what's what's going on if if if I have to jump in, if we have someone else working on sales, you know, jumping in, and we're we're we're all on the same page. We also use the due date in Trello to to mark the the next follow-up action. So, every card we we have procedures in place that every after every interaction, set the due date uh either for for tomorrow if if you didn't connect today, then call back tomorrow. If you did, then call

7:39back in a week. Um so, there's always a next action, and that due date is the um is is the uh the the notification for that. Um, we also do email follow-up after every uh after every call. So, we actually use Help Scout for this. Not only just for customer support, but also for pre-sales because it makes it easy to uh kind of collaborate within the team and and ask each other questions and make notes internally. Um, we're also running some marketing automation email marketing from the time that they request the consultation. Not only are we calling them up manually, sending personal email follow-ups, but they're also receiving um uh automated

8:16emails. We're We're using Drip for this. Uh so, they're getting like case, you know, customer case studies, highlights of our features. Um, and these are actually tailored based on what they entered in the consultation form. So, if they said something like they're if they're a food truck owner, they'll get a a case study about food truck customers. Um, from there, eventually, they would

8:39either sign up or or they disappear. Hopefully, they sign up. Um, and that would happen either over the phone with our sales person. She'll literally just fill out the sign-up form for them over the phone. That happens quite often. Or they'll they'll click a link from one of the emails, one of the personal follow-ups, or one of our email marketing and get back to the sign-up form. They'll they'll sign up. Then I

8:59get that little ping on my phone. Awesome. And uh then we actually use Zapier again to to connect them to our customer support team. So, here we're looking at our uh Slack chat room internally. So, the support team gets a gets a ping. Hey, we have a new sign-up. Um, go ahead and and initiate them. They'll send them an email and get them started on setting up their website, you know, requesting

9:22their their materials and whatnot. That used to be me. I used to I used to take, you know, a new customer's account information and like manually forward it over to the support team. Um, but now it all just kind of happens on on autopilot. Um, so, you know, again, this is kind of an overview of of those four main components and and some of the technologies that we're using. We we kind of connected up using Gravity Forms

9:44for the consultation form. Google Docs is where we organize all of our procedures. So, so, all of our uh, sales calls and and follow-ups, all of these have documented procedures um, and documented uh, key, you know, answers to to to common questions and answers to common objections and all of that. We use Skype for the phone number. So, the team is all remote. So, we use uh, you know, a Skype phone number that we can all kind of share as like one company number. Um, uh, Trello, Zapier kind of, you know, connects all of these uh, different pieces together. Help Scout for for email, Drip for email

10:19marketing, um, and and Slack to kind of uh, communicate internally and and again with some automated messages in in Slack so that my team is is up to date on what's going on. And all that kind of adds up to, um, a productized high service. So, again, I'm taking high touch activities, content marketing, sales, uh, in in, you know, phone sales, um, manual email follow-up, manually initiating new customers and and walking them on board into the into the service, um, and then connecting it all up with highly standardized procedures, some software, some third-party tools, and just kind of hooking all these things up so that everything just works as a

11:04streamlined cohesive system. Took several years to um, to to get this working the way that it does. Um, but it's it's been um, it's been, you know, a lot of fun to kind of kind of build it and that's this is the kind of stuff that I actually teach in my course on productized

11:19services. Um, and I put together a uh, a setup guide to uh, show you exactly how we hooked up all these different pieces that I talked about today. So, the settings and configurations from connecting Gravity Forms in your WordPress site, the the the the Zapier connection to Trello as a CRM, um Help Scout, all of that is documented in a guide that I that I put together at and you can get that at

11:44castand.com/microconf. And if you have any other questions or anything, I'll I'll be around tonight, so happy to talk to you. Thanks.