Dan Martell - How to Build a Revenue Growth Engine For Your Startup

00:00:00.200 Hey there, Dan Martell here, serial entrepreneur, investor

00:00:02.620 and creator of SaaS Academy.

00:00:03.960 In this video, I'm gonna teach you the five key components

00:00:06.520 of extreme revenue growth and be sure to stay to the end

00:00:09.040 where I share with you how to get access

00:00:11.240 to my weekly sync format.

00:00:13.240 It's seven steps of running your weekly agenda

00:00:15.760 with your team to get them clear on outcomes,

00:00:18.000 understand the core metrics that they need

00:00:19.960 to be executing against and make sure

00:00:21.920 that everybody feels like they have a sense

00:00:23.380 of purpose in their work week.

00:00:30.000 Now I have read over a thousand business books

00:00:41.340 and all of the top books on business growth.

00:00:44.060 We're talking traction, scaling up, double, double, good to great.

00:00:47.440 You name it, I've read it.

00:00:48.940 I'm telling you, there's a sleeper book on the market

00:00:51.600 that you've probably never heard about.

00:00:53.480 I got it from my buddy Chandler Bolt as a recommendation.

00:00:56.340 I think it's self-published and I'm telling you

00:00:59.320 It's an incredible read.

00:01:00.820 It's called Extreme Revenue Growth by Victor Chang.

00:01:04.120 I've had the privilege of emailing him back and forth

00:01:06.820 about the book.

00:01:07.820 I liked it so much that I bought copies for all of my coaching

00:01:10.620 clients because I wanted them to get access to the information.

00:01:13.620 So what I'm going to do in this video,

00:01:15.420 I've never done a book review but in essence,

00:01:18.120 I'm going to deconstruct my five top takeaways and strategies

00:01:23.420 that I think you need to understand to get the most growth

00:01:26.520 in your business.

00:01:28.120 One, target a customer that's aware of his problem.

00:01:31.960 Now, one of my rules is you need to feed a starving crowd.

00:01:36.000 If you want to build an incredible business,

00:01:37.960 don't try to sell something to somebody

00:01:39.940 that doesn't have the problem.

00:01:40.900 I can't tell you how often I get founders

00:01:43.300 that see me doing social media stuff, YouTube stuff,

00:01:46.680 email automation stuff, business investing or whatever

00:01:49.180 and they're like, I've got this tool,

00:01:50.280 I'd love for you to use it.

00:01:51.580 Let me know and I'll reconfigure all your videos

00:01:53.580 or reconfigure your workflow and I'll do it for free.

00:01:56.080 I just want you to use my product

00:01:57.540 and I have to remind them that I don't have the problem.

00:02:00.680 You didn't even qualify me.

00:02:01.940 You didn't even ask if I needed a solution to that problem

00:02:05.980 and you just think because I don't want it,

00:02:07.920 I don't care, I don't think it's a good idea.

00:02:09.620 Look, at the end of the day, your job is to find the customers

00:02:14.500 that have the pain that you can solve.

00:02:17.560 If you're trying to sell something to a market

00:02:20.360 that doesn't have the problem,

00:02:22.040 you're gonna waste your time and you could, worse,

00:02:25.040 take it at a negative signal

00:02:26.960 that maybe there's no need for your solution

00:02:28.720 when there does exist one if you go look further.

00:02:32.440 So one of my overarching rules is

00:02:35.620 only help the people swimming towards you.

00:02:38.120 If they're not, totally cool.

00:02:39.620 Maybe later there'll be a need

00:02:40.980 and you can serve them then.

00:02:42.480 So that's number one.

00:02:43.820 Number two, promise your company makes.

00:02:47.200 Think about this.

00:02:48.480 If you want to differentiate yourself in the market,

00:02:51.140 you need to make a promise to the market.

00:02:53.820 You need to stand for something.

00:02:56.080 You need to say some kind of guarantee,

00:02:58.600 some kind of promise, some kind of thing

00:03:00.920 that makes you stand out from everybody else, right?

00:03:03.320 And this is not only a driver for external communication,

00:03:05.960 but this is a driver for the internal communication

00:03:08.840 with your team to get them excited.

00:03:10.440 So maybe it's your guarantee.

00:03:12.840 Maybe it's the way that you focus

00:03:15.500 on your product interface design.

00:03:16.940 Maybe it's the experience that you deliver your customer

00:03:19.420 through customer success.

00:03:20.740 Whatever it is, you gotta ask yourself,

00:03:22.420 what is the promise we make to our market

00:03:25.820 that we stand by, that's differentiated,

00:03:27.860 that's powerful enough to get people to sit up and listen.

00:03:31.060 Number three, distribution channels.

00:03:33.140 Now, when I think about companies that have scaled fast,

00:03:35.960 have gone to market, have built top line revenue very fast,

00:03:39.140 I think of BioTrust in Austin.

00:03:41.140 They went to market, I believe,

00:03:42.700 hit 100 million in revenue within three or four years.

00:03:45.740 Maybe that number's even higher.

00:03:47.420 But one of the key ways they did that

00:03:49.380 is finding distribution partners, affiliates,

00:03:51.940 joint ventures with people that had access to the market

00:03:55.620 and they had a really incredible product, right?

00:03:58.480 So because they could fulfill on a promise

00:04:00.880 that they made on number two,

00:04:02.080 the second thing I told you about extreme revenue growth,

00:04:04.420 they were able to attract those partners to promote for them.

00:04:07.520 So that's one angle but you gotta ask yourself

00:04:09.500 what is your distribution channel for reaching your customers?

00:04:12.500 The other one is transactional.

00:04:14.320 This is looking at your business direct to consumer,

00:04:17.540 direct to the business and asking yourself

00:04:19.360 how are you gonna build that out?

00:04:20.340 Now I'll tell you, going the distribution route

00:04:22.680 through partners is cheaper in the short term

00:04:25.340 because they subsidize the cost to acquire a customer.

00:04:28.380 If I build that channel direct, then I need to figure out

00:04:31.620 how am I gonna pay for the ad spend, the creative,

00:04:35.220 the tests that need to be run and I gotta figure out

00:04:38.000 the strategies to do it if I've never done it before

00:04:40.160 to get in front of that customer.

00:04:41.200 Now that is an incredibly powerful thing to build

00:04:44.600 but the other one could be faster and more cost effective

00:04:47.800 but figuring out your distribution channels

00:04:49.740 is extremely important to build revenue growth.

00:04:52.540 Four, product that fulfills a promise.

00:04:55.440 Now, I already said that you need to make a promise

00:04:57.720 to the market, that's number one.

00:04:59.420 But two is you gotta deliver on that promise.

00:05:01.520 I always tell the clients I work with

00:05:03.060 that your marketing site has kind of a product token,

00:05:06.220 a product promise.

00:05:07.260 Your job from a product point of view,

00:05:09.120 if you can convince them on the marketing site

00:05:11.120 to engage with your product,

00:05:12.500 to sign up for a free trial or schedule a demo,

00:05:14.800 your job on a product level,

00:05:17.160 and customer success involved in that,

00:05:19.000 is to make sure that you deliver on that promise.

00:05:21.640 The worst thing you could possibly do

00:05:24.980 is have incredible distribution, incredible marketing,

00:05:29.360 only to have a product that falls short.

00:05:31.600 And it's number four in regards

00:05:33.720 to the flow of extreme revenue growth,

00:05:35.840 but it is probably the most important.

00:05:37.900 In the Valley, in San Francisco,

00:05:39.320 they call it product market fit.

00:05:41.780 And I like the idea that Victor puts out

00:05:44.100 that argues for the fact that it's really just about

00:05:47.460 fulfilling that promise and making sure that our product

00:05:50.260 delivers on what we said we could do for the market

00:05:52.700 because in doing that, that's where we increase

00:05:55.160 what I call VWAM, viral word of mouth,

00:05:57.740 marketing for your solution.

00:05:59.800 So you can still have distribution and transaction,

00:06:01.700 marketing, but if you have a product that fills on a promise,

00:06:04.240 you also get the amplification aspect of people

00:06:07.480 referring other customers to you.

00:06:09.240 Number five, sustainable competitive advantage.

00:06:12.360 Now, if you're building a business,

00:06:13.860 you wanna create a moat around you.

00:06:15.720 You don't want to make it so easy for somebody to just come

00:06:18.300 into the market and copy you and start building a business that

00:06:22.260 looks exactly like you.

00:06:23.480 So you want to create this competitive advantage.

00:06:25.480 And in the book, Victor argues for two different types.

00:06:27.860 One is a physical one.

00:06:29.240 And this could be physical in the sense of the size of a sales

00:06:32.320 team, it could be the distribution logistics systems

00:06:36.620 you built, I'm thinking Amazon.

00:06:38.240 If you didn't know, like Amazon has built this logistics

00:06:42.040 platform that is ridiculously expensive to build out and is

00:06:44.880 extremely competitive as an advantage and it's really,

00:06:48.680 so that's the physical side.

00:06:49.880 So like physical things, maybe offices in little cities all

00:06:53.720 throughout like a network of building that out.

00:06:55.480 I have a friend, he's got a hearing company,

00:06:57.400 he's done that in his market where he's got offices in all

00:07:01.060 these cities that for most people wouldn't be cost effective

00:07:03.440 but he figured out how to do it.

00:07:04.600 That is a competitive sustainable advantage on the

00:07:07.100 physical side.

00:07:08.060 On the other side, it's intangible.

00:07:09.800 So if you think of intangible, these are things like brand

00:07:12.280 reputation, key patents, exclusive partnership and

00:07:16.960 distribution deals.

00:07:18.320 If you can figure out how to do that then that's gonna allow

00:07:20.960 you to be competitive over the long term.

00:07:22.760 Too many businesses get little spurts of growth but they don't

00:07:27.020 continue past year three, four and five because they haven't

00:07:30.300 done enough work on that area.

00:07:32.300 So quick review, number one key component of extreme revenue

00:07:35.940 growth is target customer aware of his problem.

00:07:39.380 Number two is promise your company makes.

00:07:42.040 Number three is distribution channel.

00:07:44.860 Number four is product that fulfills a promise.

00:07:48.120 And five is sustainable competitive advantage.

00:07:51.460 As I mentioned at the beginning of the video,

00:07:52.660 I want to share with you the Weekly Sync format to allow you

00:07:55.440 to have incredibly productive meetings,

00:07:57.480 get everybody focused on the right goals in your business

00:08:00.220 and also allow them to surface challenges that you need to know

00:08:03.640 about so you can overcome them.

00:08:05.280 You can click the link below in the description to download

00:08:08.080 your copy and if you like this video,

00:08:09.580 be sure to click the like button, subscribe to my channel

00:08:13.020 and share this video with somebody you care about

00:08:15.060 that you think it could serve.

00:08:16.720 As per usual, I wanna challenge you to live a bigger business

00:08:19.260 and a bigger life and I'll see you next Monday.

00:08:26.100 Product that fulfills on the promise.

Dan Martell - October 22, 2018

How to Build a Revenue Growth Engine For Your Startup

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