Dan Martell - Watch these 20 minutes if you want to expand to a new market...

00:00:00.080 As you know, one partner strategically can get you 10 times more pipeline and revenue than one

00:00:07.840 customer. John, how's it going? Yeah, really good, Dan. Really good. Thanks for having me on.

00:00:26.480 well i'm excited i want i want to be helpful i know you came prepared um why don't we give some

00:00:32.240 context for everybody listening um what problem do you solve you know what's the name of your

00:00:37.040 company what problem you solve who do you solve it for and how does it work so i'm john redmond

00:00:42.480 i'm the founder of a business called bosco we help retailers make more money from their digital

00:00:48.400 marketing and we do that through using clever ai to connect all their data together all their

00:00:54.880 performance data together we then run our clever ai and machine learning over that to predict which

00:01:00.560 campaign and which channel they should be moving their money around to hit their particular

00:01:05.120 sort of digital marketing objectives it's very cool how long you've been doing it what's the

00:01:10.240 kind of the size of the company so we've we've been doing it two years um and we've i suppose

00:01:17.680 launched the product proper in just gone in the holiday season just gone in christmas

00:01:24.480 and we've got sort of 19 people so we've we took some funding at the beginning we've got 19 people

00:01:32.160 but we've now got 42 clients and we're just over 20 000 pounds um rr so two years that's fun um

00:01:42.400 john how can i help so i suppose the main thing for me is deciding um do we need direct sales

00:01:50.800 is is a big big question i'm trying to work out and then the other one is tech partners or agency

00:01:58.720 partners or both and then the other big challenge is we see the biggest opportunity so i'm talking

00:02:05.200 to you now from the uk uh i'm in the yorkshire in the north of the uk but our biggest market is the

00:02:10.720 us and i'm trying to work out or north america so canada the us can we um successfully target

00:02:20.080 the north american market from the uk or do we need boots on the ground uh in north america so

00:02:26.160 they're my sort of three main main challenges at the moment well let's pick one at a time so it

00:02:32.080 sounds like one of the questions you have is um should i build an outbound direct sales channel

00:02:38.160 right and what what are the factors you're considering like well there's a bunch question

00:02:44.160 i'd have like your annual contract value um what you've done so far to get the first customers

00:02:50.720 but when you say direct because different language different countries what do you mean by that do you

00:02:56.080 mean like like a value-added reseller do you mean somebody that's building their own pipeline what

00:03:02.960 What I mean from our point of view would be SDRs on the phone, so people outbound calling,

00:03:11.760 following up, setting up sequences in HubSpot, proactively profiling and targeting the retailers

00:03:17.440 direct and that's obviously got salary costs, commission costs, time, effort implications

00:03:25.920 and I suppose versus do we just go all in on the partners with the BigCommerce or the Shopify

00:03:31.440 integrations and really sort of push and drive that or we've got some funding do we do we go for

00:03:37.720 both um so yeah this is a great question i mean the way i think about you know anything in startup

00:03:46.620 world or company building is less is more and focus and repeatability will always win over

00:03:53.580 size of strategy so a lot of times people want to do like multiple things because it feels good

00:03:58.780 and it's exciting but the truth is if you actually look at the data and how to what i call growth

00:04:04.000 stack you're always going to be better off doing one thing getting it to a certain level and then

00:04:09.620 moving to the next level then trying to do three at the exact same time because most companies can't

00:04:15.500 figure out one let alone two let alone three and it's not that you can't do three eventually it's

00:04:20.920 just a sequencing problem right it's it's what do i do today versus next week versus next quarter

00:04:25.180 next next year so if i just look fundamentally at strategic partners and and to me there's you know

00:04:32.860 even the word partner is is loaded right like is it a value-added partner is an integration partner

00:04:38.620 is it a you know an affiliate partner etc but if i use the word partner to me it's somebody else

00:04:44.300 that will get me in front of my ideal customer profile right so when you say that do you mean

00:04:51.180 people that want to present your product to their customer base and then you will take the rest of

00:04:57.340 the sales conversation so well yeah that's then i suppose the other part of my challenge around

00:05:03.900 partners is we currently partner with shopify so you could go into the shopify app store download

00:05:09.180 our products and and you can buy it there and that's a quite a hands-off process and then we

00:05:14.460 go for the sort of upsell cross sales it's almost like a free and then we go in and upsell cross

00:05:19.340 stuff. But yeah, we also partner with agencies. So we can use agencies to actually go and sell

00:05:25.900 our product to their clients, or they can buy our product to use on behalf of their clients.

00:05:30.780 And I suppose, yeah, we have a specific partner proposition. So if you're a digital marketing

00:05:37.020 agency, we can help you help your clients better. And they could either white label it and sell it

00:05:44.220 themselves make some margin or they could just use it to be better uh and i think they're the sort of

00:05:50.460 the two challenges yeah well so here's the thing is having an app in a marketplace is a strategy

00:05:57.180 but you can't push on that right like shop you're in there you might be able to get better reviews

00:06:01.900 ratings but it's it's got an upper limit to how much pipeline it'll generate whereas the second

00:06:06.540 one you talked about which is kind of a traditional kind of reseller right because resellers typically

00:06:12.860 use the product as well as they resell it and and that's hubspot done this really well where

00:06:17.820 they've activated they just call them partners right but they confuse the language and you call

00:06:21.660 that if a reseller is going to sell the product or buy your product from you and then use it with a

00:06:27.740 client or and then charge the client then they really are a reseller and that strategy personally

00:06:34.220 is always more effective than building an outbound team because if you do it right you're really

00:06:40.460 marketing to a customer that can get you multiple customers and you only pay them when they get you

00:06:46.060 revenue right whereas if you build a bdr and this is the difference you said sdr earlier sales

00:06:51.740 development and we need the bdr as well so we need one guy to tee it up and one guy to close it

00:06:57.420 yeah so again my world my language is sdrs are people that qualify usually inbound bdrs are

00:07:05.020 are people that go outbound

00:07:06.780 and then account exec is the person that sells.

00:07:09.820 So in that model, my language, maybe not yours,

00:07:12.960 that's why I'm just being clear,

00:07:14.780 building a BDR function to go out and build pipeline

00:07:18.440 to qualify and then handing it over

00:07:20.240 to an account exec that then closes

00:07:22.420 is an incredibly tough thing to do at scale,

00:07:25.820 especially when you're early.

00:07:26.920 Usually these are things you bolt on

00:07:28.460 after you've got some brand recognition in the market

00:07:31.120 because then that creates some natural momentum.

00:07:35.020 And partners are great because then you can rely

00:07:37.880 a hundred percent on their momentum, their name brand,

00:07:40.680 their goodwill, and they'll bring you those opportunities,

00:07:45.220 right?

00:07:46.060 Versus you having to build all that with a false start.

00:07:48.420 To me, I've always said the analogy to think about

00:07:50.500 from a partner point of view is, you know,

00:07:53.420 if there was a train going by, which is, you know, pipeline,

00:07:57.560 you know, the BDR process is kind of like building the track,

00:08:02.080 laying it down, building the engine, building the train.

00:08:06.020 And at some point, you've got to build

00:08:07.900 all this infrastructure to actually like get that pipeline.

00:08:11.580 Whereas the value added reseller model,

00:08:14.820 you literally just got to build a really strong hook

00:08:17.860 and hold on for your life when you latch on to that partner

00:08:21.940 because it will bring you that pipeline.

00:08:24.280 And as you know, one partner strategically

00:08:28.720 can get you 10 times more pipeline in revenue

00:08:31.880 than one customer, right?

00:08:34.220 I was going to say that's, yeah.

00:08:35.760 That's exactly what-

00:08:36.600 It's almost the same.

00:08:38.020 Yeah, we're finding that, and that's exactly,

00:08:39.880 and it's now, and I found myself in the board meeting

00:08:43.380 the other day saying, I'm going to focus on three things.

00:08:45.740 And I'm like, well, you can't focus on three things, right?

00:08:48.200 And I found myself correcting myself and going, right,

00:08:50.200 we need to focus on one thing.

00:08:51.780 And I think partners, and we have a conversation

00:08:54.940 with a partner in New York at the moment,

00:08:56.960 and they potentially got 80 clients for us.

00:09:00.100 If it works for the first five clients,

00:09:01.780 like well we've got 75 more and if we think how long would that take a bdr and an a an account

00:09:08.180 exec to close 80 clients yeah we might have to discount and give some margin away but it's still

00:09:14.340 sales effort it's an efficient cash flow model right you're not putting out all this this this

00:09:21.060 cost of hiring training even if it's base plus variable uh infrastructure playbooks you know

00:09:26.340 there's all these things you got to learn how to do you've never done before at scale that the other

00:09:30.980 one you literally just have to reach out build relationship with partners and just have enough

00:09:34.980 of a pipeline for them to fill up your internal pipeline with their activity so i love as a

00:09:41.700 default all things being equal i always go the partner route initially because it's the most

00:09:46.100 efficient and effective and um and i can i can usually like build a really good pipeline

00:09:52.900 and i learn from that so it's like when should you have multiple ones my rule of thumb generally is

00:09:59.220 is when you get to about a hundred K a month

00:10:01.880 of net new MRR through a channel predictably,

00:10:06.720 then go, and maybe you get to 70 and you're like,

00:10:09.420 okay, I feel like this is gonna get to a hundred

00:10:11.620 and you start building the second one.

00:10:13.680 But it's like drilling a vein of gold, right?

00:10:17.600 Like drill it till you feel you're kind of like 70%

00:10:21.000 of what's there and then start drilling other test holes

00:10:24.580 to figure out what's the next one.

00:10:26.040 But once you find one that works,

00:10:27.360 you go down that 170%.

00:10:29.440 And that's why I call it growth stacking

00:10:31.200 is because I really think it's about choosing

00:10:33.440 the right channel, get it all working, get it all green,

00:10:37.680 and then stack them up to build that velocity

00:10:41.020 and that momentum.

00:10:42.340 So on that question, that's my philosophy.

00:10:45.820 I think we have time for another one.

00:10:47.240 You were talking about the tech side.

00:10:50.800 Why don't you ask?

00:10:51.640 The tech side was more putting the apps in the app store.

00:10:54.560 And then I suppose the question, again,

00:10:57.220 sort of direct versus partners if we took the money we would invest in direct salespeople

00:11:02.340 and used it to promote uh our integration in big commerce our integration in sales

00:11:07.620 in shopify or salesforce would that be a better use of time effort money and i think i sort of

00:11:12.980 i think you've sort of answered the question there um already with the partnership one

00:11:18.260 one relationship many customers and i think that that makes huge sense the other the the the big

00:11:23.700 thing i'm struggling not struggling with the discussing and debating is and i don't know how

00:11:28.500 many if you've got examples of other previous coaching clients or people you've dealt with

00:11:31.940 before is how easy or what are the challenges around entering the us market and selling into

00:11:40.180 the us from the uk yeah it's interesting for me because as a canadian um most of my business is

00:11:47.300 in the u.s and other than time zones like i've never noticed that any company treated me

00:11:54.980 differently because i was canadian um obviously i don't have the same accent like that gives it away

00:12:00.900 like oh you're not you know sometimes i'll throw in an a or two and people are like canadian i'll

00:12:05.860 be like yeah um here's what i would recommend even when i was in canada building clarity

00:12:11.540 every seven weeks i would get on a plane for a week and i would literally go new york san

00:12:16.260 francisco toronto or vancouver and then back to new brunswick where i was from and that cadence

00:12:21.780 allowed me if i was on phone calls and it was me i'm not saying it's you you might have a business

00:12:25.780 development rep and they're going to be doing this but if it's you i just i would say figure out

00:12:30.020 what's the cadence where you're in those cities that you think your ideal partners are at at what

00:12:35.140 frequency that's going to allow you to be like there you can't get away from physical presence

00:12:41.060 right yeah you just people the people will learn to trust you and build a relationship deeper

00:12:48.900 faster in person than somebody who doesn't right like zoom doesn't even do that you really need

00:12:53.620 to get in person so my rule is build that cadence build that pipeline reach out to people they're

00:12:59.140 like oh when are you in town next you say oh i'm actually there mid-april they're like oh wow well

00:13:03.540 we'll hit me up it's like well i'm actually organizing a lunch with five other people just

00:13:07.620 like you why don't you join the lunch and they're like oh that would be amazing and then you all

00:13:11.380 get together you have lunch you follow up you have conversations you can do dinners i used to do

00:13:16.260 breakfast meeting early afternoon meeting a lunch two meetings dinner and then either

00:13:22.500 flight to san francisco red eye or i would do or not a red eye uh i would do the red eye the other

00:13:27.460 way um um or you know like just just try to fill up the calendar that way but to me like that's

00:13:36.500 there's cultural differences selling into the uk versus the us the us is easier us people want to

00:13:42.740 buy they don't well this is exactly what we're finding we phone up people in the us and they're

00:13:47.780 interested in new ideas they want to explore they want to try whereas the bricks are really cynical

00:13:53.220 about oh well that's all a bit scary and that's so i'm thinking well we've got this really smart

00:13:59.060 innovative tech that we can prove works it's going to help make you more money quicker faster

00:14:04.660 and americans love that all right i'm always looking for markets that are quick to buy and

00:14:10.740 spend the most and the reason why the american market is is attractive to a lot of european

00:14:15.780 clients of mine that i work with is because um the us dollar for the most part so there's there's

00:14:21.700 currency component to it there's a speed of purchasing decision seems to be higher they

00:14:27.460 like to be sold i know that a lot of my uh my scale specialists that try to enroll clients that are in

00:14:33.860 in europe like they want multiple conversations to make a decision even though they could have

00:14:38.500 made it on the first call it's just kind of part of the culture um and it's just not like you said

00:14:43.940 they're not uh as apt to be early adopters or early innovators around some new technology

00:14:49.940 whereas in the us there's just kind of this culture of like trying to find the competitive

00:14:54.420 edge and if they feel that's your product then they're gonna really push it through the

00:14:58.340 organization to make that decision but in regards to like the differences again time zone and

00:15:04.740 physical presence if you can solve that using the strategy i mentioned where like every two and a

00:15:10.020 half months if you want you go there for 10 days you do all your meetings you queue them up you

00:15:14.020 bring your clients together you do your your deployments your you kind of schedule things

00:15:18.340 to be super efficient and then are able to work later in your day typically so that you can

00:15:23.940 especially with the west coast customers being in europe like you know their their their early

00:15:28.580 morning is kind of your afternoon and then it kind of keeps floating past um other than that

00:15:35.220 it does make it tricky we're trying to do that at the moment um but my data science teams in melbourne

00:15:40.020 australia and i i deal with them at 5 a.m which is great uk time and then we're on the west coast

00:15:45.700 like uh 9 p.m but that's fine that's the only thing actually culturally speaking it's way easier

00:15:51.780 to go europe to us than us to europe that's my experience and i've had geez probably a hundred

00:15:58.020 clients you know go both ways that i've coached over the years and and the history especially

00:16:02.980 when you're opening up offices that's a completely different challenge but in regards to just

00:16:07.940 building pipeline and selling partnerships for the most part um i think it's going to be easier

00:16:13.300 to go from europe to the us than the other way yeah no no and i think that's that's that's got

00:16:18.340 to be the strategy and that whole one-to-many with the value-added reseller is definitely the

00:16:23.300 the way forward and it's a there's so much pipeline there for you that if you just got all your

00:16:27.620 resources and all your efforts and focus on like we're going to build a repeatable scalable model

00:16:32.820 we're going to document build our crm we're going to build the whole you know like best practices

00:16:37.940 playbooks for each stage of this crm until we can predictably you know ramp up and add 10 to 15 new

00:16:44.980 partners every month every new partner generates x amount of pipeline and we can start to build

00:16:49.540 predictability in it and you get it to consistently with a somewhat pot like not like a decent cac

00:16:56.340 payback period of like some things you know less than nine months i mean that's when you've got

00:17:03.620 predictability in the model it's way more advantageous for you to get that to work and

00:17:09.300 make it work then try to do three because it sounds great to your board or your investors

00:17:13.780 Because at the end of the day, the probability of you making that work is going to be way higher than trying to go build a BDR and account exec model that's extremely expensive.

00:17:23.780 Like that's just the reality of it. It is like you got to pay people, you know, 100 to 150 grand a year to do the business development side, the BDR side.

00:17:33.280 Then you got to pay a couple hundred grand, you know, 300 grand a year for a salesperson that can sell at the level you're talking about, kind of that mid-market enterprise.

00:17:41.480 and um you know like that's just one person in each is 500 000 a year kind of stack right when

00:17:48.240 you look at commissions and so it's like if you want to really build out that volume i mean you're

00:17:52.720 in a million and a half in an investment and that's if it works right where the other one

00:17:57.480 you have one person just reaching out building those relationships queuing up maybe them for

00:18:01.420 you a lot of my clients just do it with their assistant initially and just start to build that

00:18:05.780 playbook and then hand it off to somebody else who might just do the sourcing and then somebody

00:18:10.320 else that comes full time to do the uh kind of the partnership management side yeah yeah and i

00:18:16.500 know and i think i think you're right we can't i can't focus on all three so because that that's

00:18:21.020 not that's not focused but yeah these um and it is reassuring to put it yeah it's reassuring to

00:18:27.020 hear because my experience so far is actually the selling into the north america from the uk

00:18:34.400 is a lot easier and they sort of half seem to like the brits phoning them up especially 0.95

00:18:39.920 100 percent you guys have the accent you sound smart um you usually are you're kind i mean it's

00:18:46.560 it's a competitive advantage so john as we wrap up i'm just curious what would be the the kind of

00:18:50.960 two or three biggest takeaways that you've got from our chat today well i i think it's it's

00:18:55.600 reassured me that it's completely doable for a software company from the north of england to

00:19:02.080 take on north america uh which is and we'd rather be a small company in america than a huge company

00:19:09.040 in the uk in terms of future valuation that's really where we've got to be and i think um yeah

00:19:16.640 not necessarily investing a huge amount of money in direct sales and focusing on that

00:19:21.360 value-added reseller model where i can get the one-to-many very quickly um and get my hook into

00:19:27.120 the train i think is is a is a very good analogy now we've already been planning the calendar to

00:19:34.000 to go on like, when can we go?

00:19:36.240 What events are on?

00:19:37.440 And like, so Shop Talk in Vegas in a few weeks

00:19:39.980 and all these different things that we can go to

00:19:42.160 and then build meetings around that.

00:19:44.040 So yeah, that's been super helpful.

00:19:46.320 Thank you very much, Dan.

00:19:47.680 I love it, John.

00:19:48.520 Appreciate the time.

00:19:49.360 We'll talk soon.

00:19:50.200 Have an amazing day.

00:19:51.360 Thank you for having me.

00:19:52.760 Cheers.

Dan Martell - June 20, 2022

Watch these 20 minutes if you want to expand to a new market...

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