Dan Martell - How To Succeed In A Competitive Market

00:00:00.000 Where am I going to break?

00:00:01.240 You're like, I've seen this a hundred times.

00:00:03.260 Most people that try to skip that step

00:00:05.760 and don't build the playbooks

00:00:07.000 end up falling backwards on the weight of their growth.

00:00:23.600 What is up, Barney? How are you doing?

00:00:25.380 I'm good. How are you?

00:00:26.620 I'm doing incredible.

00:00:27.520 I, uh, excited to chat. Um, just so for everybody's, uh, context, why don't you give us a 30 seconds

00:00:35.620 company who you serve, what problem you solve and how you solve it?

00:00:39.220 Absolutely. I am Marnie Stockman, CEO of Lifecycle Insights. Uh, so we help IT business owners sell

00:00:45.780 to execs, not techs. Cool. So IT business owners sell to execs, not techs, meaning C-level,

00:00:54.240 not the dev teams or engineering teams what yeah what problem do you solve for that yeah so um we

00:01:01.380 they they get into the tactics the technology very easily not the sales piece so the strategic

00:01:07.640 conversation so we help automate reports so they get the reports that they need and we help tie

00:01:13.060 that to the business pains and an assessment piece they can connect for the business owner

00:01:17.560 business pain how we're going to solve it for you cool so i kind of get the problem you you help

00:01:22.200 these, these, these, uh, it consultancies manage the quarterly reviews with their small business

00:01:29.380 customers so that they can not only keep the customer, but get new business. Absolutely. Yep.

00:01:35.140 What, what can I help with today? Uh, so I've got, I've got a few questions. Um, my favorite is we do

00:01:45.200 So 10% of what we do is what 80% of what is a competitor of ours does. And I am most interested in the best way to market to them. So we do all of the education, the organic pieces. And I'm curious if you have a good strategy around, I've done Google ads, people do not search for these terms, they find other vendors in the space by

00:02:15.920 um by asking people in their peer groups right so they speak to others who they would go after

00:02:21.760 so targeting them in a traditional facebook ad or google ad or whatever doesn't seem to work as

00:02:28.320 much so i'm curious if you have any so i'm trying to understand it so the problem you're trying to

00:02:33.920 solve is a potential customer of yours discovering you online yes particularly targeted to a

00:02:43.680 a competitor okay so you want to target your competitor's customer base yes okay um why do

00:02:52.840 that versus not just speak to the market and the problem they have uh so we we regularly do that

00:02:59.100 and we get some good traction for sure okay this we are doing something unique to combat this one

00:03:06.360 particular competitor okay so here's a question then because i've done this many times over the

00:03:11.560 years um you know one of the strategies i teach is core targeting which is asking the question of

00:03:18.160 what other products does my ideal customer purchase and through that process right the

00:03:25.560 i call it the fun the follow and the frequent model so on the fun side where do they spend

00:03:30.740 money on how do i attract or get in front of that customer does your competitor run an event every

00:03:37.060 year they do not they attend events okay they don't run an event do they have a facebook page

00:03:43.880 they do not okay do they um have a partnership with any other companies that you're aware of

00:03:51.920 so they have they integrate with other companies as do we okay so is there is there anything that

00:04:01.780 tells you from a website that a company is using your competitor? Sometimes we can identify them

00:04:08.920 on the client end. Well, I can see like for folks that we integrate with that they also integrate,

00:04:15.680 but I don't know the end. But typically what you'll see sometimes if the tool has like

00:04:20.000 a scheduling component to it or a contact form, you can scrape the HTML of a website to see if

00:04:27.740 they use hubspot shopify your competitor's name does that make sense does your competitor have

00:04:34.180 a tool a widget that they ask their customers install on their website um do you have a tool

00:04:46.700 that you ask your customers install on their website no no okay so so i'm always looking

00:04:53.300 for artifacts i'm looking for i'm with you i'm intrigued yeah no and this is this is the this

00:04:58.560 is where i think growth hacking truly comes from it's not essentially marketing people are like oh

00:05:03.820 growth hacking is this and i'm like that sounds like marketing to me growth hacking is asking

00:05:08.160 yourself what data point artifact characteristic is true that if i uncovered and i found a creative

00:05:15.880 way to build some technology a scraper utility to pull that list that i would be able to create

00:05:22.640 some kind of campaign right so if i knew they had a private facebook group and i scanned that group

00:05:28.700 i'm not saying anybody should do this but people have done this which is scrape all the facebook

00:05:34.120 ids turn it into a remarketing list and and created ads against that you can imagine that

00:05:39.100 would be something people do right um or scrape you know using builtwith.com which is a great

00:05:46.160 tool to find companies that have used certain technologies to build their website or there's

00:05:52.260 companies out there that I don't know the names of them, but I know my team uses it to find my

00:05:58.840 sales team does this to find companies that what they do is they search the job postings of

00:06:06.340 companies to see what technology they mentioned to figure out what companies are using what

00:06:10.920 technology. Isn't that cool? So, so, so companies around the world publish their job postings and

00:06:17.820 in the job posting say things like

00:06:19.680 must have 15 years experience in Siebel

00:06:22.820 or BEA WebLogic or Oracle DataFrames.

00:06:27.380 And then they'll scrape that and then sell that list,

00:06:31.880 you know, to people that are trying to sell

00:06:34.280 the companies that have these characteristics.

00:06:36.320 So that's what I'm always thinking about.

00:06:40.020 Other strategies, again, I don't recommend these,

00:06:42.420 but I'm gonna share them anyways,

00:06:43.780 because that's my job.

00:06:44.880 You know, I work with hundreds of SaaS founders

00:06:47.140 trying to build demand gen programs.

00:06:50.380 Another strategy is to find out who used to work

00:06:52.760 at that organization as a sales rep

00:06:55.200 and see if they might have potentially access

00:06:58.640 to other people have done this, not us.

00:07:01.500 We would never do this,

00:07:02.420 but you can imagine somebody could do that.

00:07:05.180 And they would bring their book of business with them.

00:07:07.980 That's another way to do it, right?

00:07:11.820 But typically like I'm looking for partnership connections

00:07:16.100 And then I'll see if I can build a relationship

00:07:19.280 with that partner that's more lucrative

00:07:20.700 than my competitor.

00:07:24.640 Back in the day, I used to use compete.com.

00:07:26.400 There's probably some other SEO tools

00:07:28.060 that will actually show me

00:07:29.200 who are the largest referrals for my competitor.

00:07:32.080 So I might be able to find out

00:07:34.040 what traffic source is generating the most traffic to them

00:07:37.720 and then try to build a relationship

00:07:39.780 with that traffic source to send that traffic to me.

00:07:43.340 That is super interesting.

00:07:45.380 The interesting part is none of our competitors

00:07:47.320 actually do much marketing at all.

00:07:49.560 So they tell us we are everywhere in the space

00:07:52.600 because they actually see us out there.

00:07:54.040 We just want more of that space.

00:07:56.320 Yeah, so trying to figure out traffic,

00:07:59.400 try to figure out who has the list of their customers,

00:08:02.240 figure out who's the partners with them.

00:08:04.300 Like, you know, that is competing in the space.

00:08:08.280 There's gray hat techniques, there's black hat stuff.

00:08:12.560 I'm super ethical.

00:08:13.820 I don't do anything I wouldn't feel comfortable having published on the homepage of the Wall

00:08:18.180 Street Journal. But at the same time, I'm aware of every strategy out there for demand gen. So A,

00:08:23.840 I can protect myself against it. That's also another reason to be aware of them,

00:08:27.580 not just stick your head in the sand. But that's the way I think about it. And I guess like there's

00:08:32.360 some more digging for you to do to figure out where that might lie. But now you understand the

00:08:36.200 principles and the framework behind it. Does that make sense? Oh, completely. And frankly,

00:08:40.600 when i wrote that question for myself i i finished it with without being gross like we just refused

00:08:45.780 to be totally one of our core values so i'm not going to do any of the you have a core value

00:08:50.600 called don't be gross uh it actually is transparent but okay you might change it to don't be gross

00:08:57.540 because you know our don't be gross is a little bit more specific it's like don't be evil but a

00:09:02.380 little bit broader um meaning um what did you like best about what i just shared marnie what

00:09:09.140 what resonated the most with you well i for sure the referral piece because i think i actually

00:09:14.240 know how to go about doing that so to find what is a good referral source for them can become a

00:09:19.460 good referral source to us because we'll be scrappy and go do that cool uh what else can

00:09:24.260 help with so if we are at 500 000 mrr and aim to be at 1 million mr in six months i'm assuming you

00:09:33.660 I mean, ARR, annual recovery, not monthly.

00:09:36.300 Oh, I do mean ARR. Wouldn't that be something? Yes.

00:09:37.640 Because, I mean, if you're at that level, then we should talk about a little bit more fun.

00:09:42.440 Yeah.

00:09:42.880 You're McLaren.

00:09:44.820 So, okay.

00:09:45.940 Yes.

00:09:46.700 ARR.

00:09:48.340 What am I not going to see coming?

00:09:50.000 We're like scrapping like champs to get all of the processes in place.

00:09:53.060 Where am I going to break that you're like, I've seen this a hundred times or a thousand times?

00:09:58.420 Yeah.

00:09:58.680 I mean, in the early days, there's this level of scale, right?

00:10:02.560 at the bottom it's always product you can't out grow yourself from a bad product so we always

00:10:08.000 start with product the next level is promotion so if i ask you on a product level it sounds like you

00:10:13.200 feel pretty comfortable you have a great product based on the fact that you do you know 80 of or

00:10:19.040 10 of 80 of what somebody else does right so you have a great product so then i go to promotion

00:10:25.840 which is how do I build a demand gen engine where I can,

00:10:30.840 and I'm always looking for CAC payback.

00:10:32.700 That is my core metric.

00:10:33.860 So where can I invest money to generate sales

00:10:38.520 and do that in a period that's quick enough

00:10:41.540 to cover my costs?

00:10:43.240 So CAC includes marketing and sales expenses, okay?

00:10:47.780 So your marketing team, budgets, sales team, commissions,

00:10:52.720 and truly what's called fully loaded CAC

00:10:55.640 includes tooling office space and if you want to get even nerdier just gross margin not revenue

00:11:03.720 right so you can play around what feels good but typically i want to get for bootstrap founder cac

00:11:08.920 payback period for all my coaching clients i want to give them below 90 days because if i can get

00:11:13.960 them below 90 days then if you grow really quick and you don't have below 90 days that's where you

00:11:19.560 you're forced almost to go raise external capital just to fund your growth right but if you can get

00:11:24.760 really creative on implementation fees or what's called setup fees um which i teach in my sas

00:11:29.880 academy program like i have this whole framework called the setup fee implementation which i think

00:11:34.840 if you do it right for the right type of of mid-market you know demo led sales process you

00:11:41.240 should be able to be cash flow uh you know cap payback period within 30 to 60 days right um

00:11:49.160 you know, by deferring your sales commission to an agent,

00:11:53.740 collecting the cash upfront.

00:11:56.320 Cause really that's the game we're playing that.

00:11:58.660 So that's on the promotion side, right?

00:12:00.340 So, and then I'll give you the third level out of the five

00:12:03.020 cause that's probably where you're gonna run into issues

00:12:05.020 after that is the process side.

00:12:07.120 It's if I've got the product

00:12:10.700 and I've got a demand generation

00:12:12.880 and a sales process working,

00:12:15.260 then it's documenting the process from a marketing,

00:12:19.360 sales and onboarding customer success point of view

00:12:22.820 to then unlock the next level of growth.

00:12:24.760 Most people that try to skip that step

00:12:27.320 and don't build the playbooks end up falling backwards

00:12:30.700 on the weight of their growth, right?

00:12:33.320 And that's where they fire people, customers fire them, 1.00

00:12:37.700 they have buggy code because they haven't taken the time

00:12:40.600 to say, hey, what are our best practices

00:12:43.180 when it comes to marketing?

00:12:44.320 What's our best practices when it comes to sales?

00:12:46.600 What's our best practices for handoffs

00:12:49.100 in between departments and onboarding customers?

00:12:52.140 What's our best practices for monitoring our customers

00:12:54.560 and make sure that they're happy with our product, right?

00:12:57.140 And then operationally speaking,

00:12:59.080 I had a client the other day that ran a report,

00:13:01.200 because I do this with all new coaching clients,

00:13:03.660 and they found out they had a customer

00:13:06.020 that hadn't paid an invoice in 17 months.

00:13:09.960 But I mean, this is like, that's just a thing

00:13:12.660 that they didn't have any accounts receivable process.

00:13:15.860 The person that was doing the bookkeeping

00:13:17.780 was so busy with just trying to do the bookkeeping,

00:13:20.000 they weren't even thinking about accounts receivable.

00:13:21.960 And they found out that they had dozens of customers

00:13:24.900 that hadn't paid invoices a while,

00:13:26.400 but the one that was the worst was 17 months.

00:13:28.660 And like, try to go back to a customer and say,

00:13:31.640 oh, sorry, you owe us $20,000

00:13:34.520 because we were not on top of it.

00:13:35.840 They're just gonna be like, I'll give you three

00:13:38.780 and you should start invoicing me next month.

00:13:40.560 act together yeah so i mean these are the things that to me process is the next stage once you can

00:13:46.820 get the promotion side figured out does that make sense marnie it does and plus side it is what 0.59

00:13:52.220 we're working on like around the clock so what do you like best about that strategy like what

00:13:57.740 resonated the most with you well i think it mainly just confirms that that is what we're spending the

00:14:03.680 right time doing right it feels like you have to slow down a bit to document every single piece but

00:14:07.660 if we don't do it, we break in the future. Um, and, and I come from a background of customer

00:14:12.840 success as a matter of fact, I wrote a book on it for managed service providers. Um, so I truly

00:14:18.040 believe in the pieces you were talking about, about figuring out when they're happy, healthy,

00:14:21.940 et cetera. Awesome. Cool. Marnie with that, I just want to tell you how much I appreciate

00:14:25.720 the time, the opportunity to, uh, you know, help you out a little bit. And, um, I'm just grateful

00:14:31.520 to have you in the program and support you on your journey. Well, I appreciate the call. Very

00:14:36.420 excited. All right. Have an amazing rest of the day. You too. Bye bye. Cheers.

Dan Martell - March 07, 2022

How To Succeed In A Competitive Market

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