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Growth Stacking Show with Dan Martell

Dan Martell is a Canadian serial entrepreneur and angel investor. Subscribe now and learn his best strategies to build and scale successful products and businesses. Now hit that button and start the show. It's FREE.
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Now displaying: February, 2018
Feb 26, 2018

Exclusive Resource: Revenue Retention Cheatsheet™ - Stop The Bleeding & Scale Your Marketing With Confidence - http://bit.ly/36LMR4H

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Has a customer ever punched you in the face?

No?

Has it ever felt like that?

Every time I’ve had a customer sign-up, stick around for a few months, and cancel (aka churn) it sure feels that way.

It doesn’t matter how long I’ve been building businesses, nothing frustrates me more than having a customer that I spent a ton of time, energy and money attracting, leave because we missed the mark.

What’s different about my approach is that I take 110% accountability for customers churning.

Meaning, I want to know EXACTLY why it happened… and see how I can fix it. Or at the very least, make sure it’s the first and only time someone ever leaves for that reason.

Too many founders just chalk it up as a numbers thing… pegging it as normal.

I don’t agree, and I’ve outlined the 5 steps I take to ensure I reduce my churn as fast as possible while scaling up my revenue.

That’s what I cover in this week’s video.

When it comes to reducing churn in your business, I’ve outlined a comprehensive 9 step checklist that my coaching clients use to get results fast, called the Churn Buster Checklist…

You can download it here.

… however, what I want to share with you in this video are the 5 areas that I think most founders completely ignore:

  1. They don’t measure their metrics
  2. They don’t learn from their cancellation process
  3. The product is too easy to switch off of
  4. They don’t automate dunning management
  5. No one is paying attention to customers who show signs of cancelling

At the end of the day, the holy grail for any SaaS startup is net negative churn… a point where your expansion revenue grows faster than your churned MRR.

The fastest way to get there is to bust the churn you have, and grow your existing accounts by 20-30% per year.

Once you’ve hit this nirvana, the sky’s the limit.

Keep up the good fight!

--

Dan Martell has advised more startups than his hometown has people and teaches startup founders like you how to scale. (Get the free 3 videos to grow your business here.) He previously created, raised venture funding for and successfully exited two tech startups: Flowtown and Clarity.fm. You should follow him on twitter@danmartell for tweets that are actually awesome.

+ Instagram (behind the scenes): http://instagram.com/danmartell
+ Facebook (live trainings + Q&A): http://FB.com/DanMartell
+ Twitter (what I'm reading): http://twitter.com/danmartell

Exclusive Resource: Revenue Retention Cheatsheet™ - Stop The Bleeding & Scale Your Marketing With Confidence - http://bit.ly/36LMR4H

Feb 19, 2018

WATCH: Follow Up Formula Training - http://bit.ly/2suTQiK
DOWNLOAD: Worksheet - http://bit.ly/2BWqoGt

All SaaS companies need sales people.

Even products like Dropbox & Slack have sales teams.

If you look at the Montclare SaaS 250 list, they all have sales teams.

So why do startups push off making this hire for so long?

It’s usually because they don’t know what to look for and are scared that a new fancy pants sales person wouldn’t close enough deals to cover their cost.

A totally legit concern.

But one you need to quickly blast through if you have any serious hopes of scaling.

I hired my first sales person in 2006 and it changed my business.

It unlocked a huge roadblock that I had in my ability to follow up, sell and keep revenues flowing as I was flooded with other tasks required to continue scaling my company.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t all rev-gen rainbows and scaled up sunshine.

What I missed in that hire were these 6 characteristics that forced me to replace him 2 months later.

If you’re about to make your first hire, or want to improve your sales team, then be sure to look for these characteristics:

  1. Dedicated to Prospecting
  2. Follows Sales Process
  3. Social Researcher
  4. Curious About Customer’s Needs
  5. Add Value to Every Interaction
  6. Leverages Micro-Moments

During the video I go deeper into what these mean and specifically how to test for them.

But the main thing to get right is to have a hiring, training and onboarding process for your salespeople to get them productive as fast as possible.

While getting an “out of the box” ROI may be a bit ambitious…

My rule is that every salesperson should be hitting 80% of quota within 6 months of hiring, if not, replace them.

If you have questions about compensation, be sure to leave a comment and I’ll give you my simple formula for making this brain dead simple.

Have an amazing day!

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Dan Martell has advised more startups than his hometown has people and teaches startup founders like you how to scale. (Get the free 3 videos to grow your business here.) He previously created, raised venture funding for and successfully exited two tech startups: Flowtown and Clarity.fm. You should follow him on twitter@danmartell for tweets that are actually awesome.

Are you an entrepreneur? Get free weekly video training here:
http://www.danmartell.com/newsletter

+ Instagram (behind the scenes): http://instagram.com/danmartell
+ Facebook (live trainings + Q&A): http://FB.com/DanMartell
+ Twitter (what I'm reading): http://twitter.com/danmartell

Feb 12, 2018

DOWNLOAD: 5 Productivity Hacks - http://bit.ly/2E14QKl

Want to know one habit ultra-successful people have in common?

They read.

A lot.

In fact, when Warren Buffett was asked about the key to his success, he pointed to a stack of books and said:

“Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.”

It’s why you’ll find a bookshelf or library in most wealthy people’s homes… reading is a leading indicator of success.

Now, it doesn’t guarantee it, but it is one huge part of it.

The truth is, success leaves clues and over the years I’ve discovered that some of the simplest strategies to getting the most out of life, like reading, can be boiled down to these 8 steps.

If you know my story, you know I spend a lot of time working with at-risk teenagers helping them build their confidence by building a business.

By doing that work I’ve had to distill a few habits that are easily understood and simple to take action on…

For me, they come down to these:

  1. Read every day, at least 10 pages of non-fiction.
  2. Focus on high-level tasks, things that move the needle.
  3. Make your health a priority and treat it like a high performing race horse.
  4. Learn from people you admire and model their actions.
  5. Plan your day the night before so you can crush the following day!
  6. Keep your goals in front of you so you can remind yourself of the outcome.
  7. Take action on the scary stuff… that’s the true definition of hustle imho.
  8. Have a powerful inspiring “why” that pulls you forward like a magnet.

If you want to squeeze every minute out of every day, then follow these strategies and it will generate a huge level of ROI.

I’m sure there’s dozens of other things you could be doing to succeed more in life and your business, so please leave a comment and let me know your favourite strategy.

Can’t wait to read them all!

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Dan Martell has advised more startups than his hometown has people and teaches startup founders like you how to scale. (Get the free 3 videos to grow your business here.) He previously created, raised venture funding for and successfully exited two tech startups: Flowtown and Clarity.fm. You should follow him on twitter@danmartell for tweets that are actually awesome.

Are you an entrepreneur? Get free weekly video training here:
http://www.danmartell.com/newsletter

+ Instagram (behind the scenes): http://instagram.com/danmartell
+ Facebook (live trainings + Q&A): http://FB.com/DanMartell
+ Twitter (what I'm reading): http://twitter.com/danmartell

Feb 5, 2018

Have you ever been talked into do something you knew was dumb?

*raises hand*

Back when I was scaling my company Spheric Technologies, a friend introduced me to his buddy who did outsourced sales.

Essentially, a quick fix “easy button” for business owners who can’t be bothered to take full control of the lifeblood of their business. Smart right? 

His big promise was that he could get me scheduled meetings with qualified buyers for our services…

… so I gave him a try.

The cost was about $5K/month + a $5K setup, so I gave it a try to see if it would move the needle.

My average deal size was $60K, so I figured just one new customer every month would be a huge win. No brainer, right?

But it all fell apart. Fast.

The meetings were horrible.

The prospects unqualified.

And the whole thing turned out to be a huge waste of time, energy, and money.

That’s when I decided to smarten up, take full control of the selling process, and build my own sales team in house.

I went “all in” and immersed myself in everything I could about building and scaling a sales team.

That’s what I want to share with you in this week’s video.

If you want the bulleted list of activities that’s required for scaling a software sales team, here’s my prescription…

  1. Pay a base salary
  2. Set a quota
  3. Provide a commission
  4. Use accelerators
  5. Hire a sales manager

Now, the truth is, in the early days you’ll likely be doing all the selling, but the best way to backfill this work is to document everything you do to achieve results.

This includes creating a demo script using my Rocket Demo Builder framework, your system for qualifying, and the follow up process.

It’s how my coaching clients and the founders I advise have scaled their sales teams to over 150+ sales people.

If you have any questions about scaling your sales team, leave a comment below and I’ll be sure to reply.

--

Dan Martell has advised more startups than his hometown has people and teaches startup founders like you how to scale. (Get the free 3 videos to grow your business here.) He previously created, raised venture funding for and successfully exited two tech startups: Flowtown and Clarity.fm. You should follow him on twitter@danmartell for tweets that are actually awesome.

Are you an entrepreneur? Get free weekly video training here:
http://www.danmartell.com/newsletter

+ Instagram (behind the scenes): http://instagram.com/danmartell
+ Facebook (live trainings + Q&A): http://FB.com/DanMartell
+ Twitter (what I'm reading): http://twitter.com/danmartell

3 Forces of a Sales Pipeline: https://vimeo.com/237859087/fbbb78d3b5

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