If I asked you to name a credit card company that rhymes with latex…”
Could you guess who I’m talking about?
Yes? Got it?
Good, so now you’ll understand the size of the company I was trying to sell to.
The challenge with big companies is that they have all the time, resources and money in the world, so wasting your company’s time isn’t a big deal.
For a small company, this imbalance of resources can mean death.
So to even the playing field, I developed a technique I call the Commitment Fee™.
It’s simple, if you’re working on a big deal, have the potential client put some money up front in case the deal goes south and doesn’t produce the value (press, new customers, etc) that you expected.
In this case, I negotiated and got them to agree to invest $50K.
I knew I went too low when they instantly replied and agreed.
I should’ve asked for 4x that!
All good, lesson learned.
But over the years I’ve developed many other strategies like this to sell to large companies, and cut the time required to close by half.
Watch this week’s video to learn these strategies, and pay extra close attention to my Virtual Close™ strategy.
It’s a simple way to paint the path to cash… while shortening it at the same time ;-)
Selling to big companies requires a different approach than most B2B sales…
… the 3 strategies I use involve a mix of the following:
What would it mean if you could quickly gauge the actual interest level of the company you’re dealing with so you don’t end up wasting your time on something that’s essentially dead on arrival…
… or what if you could reduce your time to close by more than half so you can get paid faster and reinvest in growth?
Yep. Pretty critical stuff.
Leave a comment below letting me know if you’ve ever had your time wasted by a bigger company, and what you plan to do to make sure it never happens again.
Bonus points if you test out the strategy on your next call and report back the results.
Can’t wait to read your responses.
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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
+ Join me on FB: http://FB.com/DanMartell
+ Connect w/ me live: http://periscope.tv/danmartell
+ Tweet me: http://twitter.com/danmartell
+ Instagram awesomeness: http://instagram.com/danmartell
Did you know that Slideshare.net built their product in India?
Automattic (creators of WordPress) – 2,000 people in a distributed team.
Even GitHub (raised $250M+ in funding) has a global team of remote workers.
The future of teams are distributed.
Over my past 3 companies (Spheric, Flowtown, Clarity) and everything in between, I’ve always had world class team members work from wherever they lived.
In many cases we had an office, but not everyone worked from there – and truth was – we just used it to get together and meet with partners.
Now, over the years I’ve learned A LOT about building and managing distributed teams without sacrificing our culture.
That’s what I cover in this week’s video.
It takes the right people (sourcing), meeting (structure) and systems (tools) to make it work seamlessly.
Watch the video to unpack each specific strategy, guided by the underlying theme that you should be always over communicating your vision.
Have you ever worked on a distributed team, or managed others from afar?
Leave a message and share your #1 tip with the community.
If you do it right, it can unlock a whole new level of productivity, and a much deeper talent pool to source from.
Can’t wait to read your responses.
Have an incredible 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
+ Join me on FB: http://FB.com/DanMartell
+ Connect w/ me live: http://periscope.tv/danmartell
+ Tweet me: http://twitter.com/danmartell
+ Instagram awesomeness: http://instagram.com/danmartell
Can you explain your business to someone who’s outside your industry?
That’s been the benefit of having a father who has no clue what I’ve done for most of my career :).
It’s also helped me learn how to explain my company’s benefits to a new customer.
One way to do that in a scalable way is to use live chat on your business site.
A few months ago I was in the middle a of a big sales project and I had chat setup on the page.
After a few days, I finally decided to dive into the trenches.
The experience blew my mind.
Helping leads become buyers became addictively satisfying.
I could watch in real time as the prospects I was chatting with, would gain the courage and reassurance to finally hit “buy”.
Here’s what happened next, and the 7 strategies that I’ve taught others who use live chat for sales on their website.
The big ideas can be summarized in this list:
If you’re asking me what tools you should use, I’m going to recommend Intercom.
Why?
I’m an investor :)…
… but for real, it’s beautiful.
I’d also encourage you to install TextExpander to speed up your chats.
So, are you going to give it a try?
If so, leave a comment with your experience after your first chat!
I would love to hear more, and I might even scoot over to your site to say hello
Have an amazing day!
--
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
+ Join me on FB: http://FB.com/DanMartell
+ Connect w/ me live: http://periscope.tv/danmartell
+ Tweet me: http://twitter.com/danmartell
+ Instagram awesomeness: http://instagram.com/danmartell
It was like writing your own bio, but 10x harder.
This is the story of my logo.
It started with a call to Gair.
I was nervous.
You see, he’s the guy I’ve called to help me uncover the visual identity of my last two companies.
But this time things were different.
The new brand wasn’t just a business.
It represented my very essence.
I wanted help extracting the core of who I am.
I wanted to create a logo that represented all my beliefs, philosophies and life truths.
The goal was to create something that I could stamp my original work with.
A visual lighthouse that could outlive me, and guide my two boys way past my time on earth with them.
No small task, right?
That call turned into several meetings, some lasting 2+ hours where Gair took a 20V power drill into the core of my being.
He pricked and probed me with dozens of deeply intimate questions until he truly understood what makes me tick.
It was painful.
It’s just weird talking about myself from this light, but I knew the work was important.
Once the initial brand essence was extracted, we called my buddy Rich up to help with the visual creative.
This video reveals what happened next.
To this day, people still don’t realize that the logo came from my signature.
If you ever work on a logo project, remember these 3 things:
And when you find the right logo / design, it will speak to you…
… it’ll energize you and give you that feeling that anything’s possible.
If it was on a t-shirt, would you wear it everyday?
That’s what you’re looking for.
Now it’s your turn.
If you created a logo for your personal brand, what are the 3 words it would stand for?
Leave a comment with those words!
Excited to read what you’ve got.
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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
+ Join me on FB: http://FB.com/DanMartell
+ Connect w/ me live: http://periscope.tv/danmartell
+ Tweet me: http://twitter.com/danmartell
+ Instagram awesomeness: http://instagram.com/danmartell
The other day my furnace stopped working.
The issue is that my wife was trying to change the air filter.
Why?
Don’t ask (she just likes to do those kinds of things, and yes - I realize I’m the man of the house and I should be doing it, but I digress...)
After Renee’s noble attempt at performing advanced furnace surgery…
… we got stuck with a half-opened furnace, and no idea how to piece that sucker back together.
So I called my brother who built my house (he’s kind of a baller, check out his story).
He laughed and asked why the heck I was changing the filter myself?
Why didn’t I have the furnace guy do it?
I didn’t know that was an option...
... so I called the guy up and he starts telling me about his “Maintenance Plan”.
After about 15 seconds I said “Sign me up.”
That’s how he locked me in on a recurring service model for his business.
Most businesses totally miss out on building this into their model.
Instead of figuring out how to add more value and create an ongoing service, they let competitors swoop in and steal the contract.
Honestly, I think my brother should of made a list of monthly / yearly services that I should’ve considered and got me to sign-up for them when we closed on the house.
Things like:
Even if all he did was sign me up, he could’ve been collecting sweet monthly residuals for the rest of his life without lifting a finger (or putting a furnace back together).
That strategy (and a few other keepers) is what I cover in this week’s video.
How do you increase the amount of repeat business from a customer to improve your long term value so you’re not always having to find new customers.
When I’m training a group of entrepreneurs at my events, I always walk them through these areas of focus:
Each one of these take very little effort to implement, but will have a HUGE impact on your business.
My favourite is asking for a case study or to get a testimonial.
When you do it right, it adds incredible credibility to your business (plus it’s super fun and fulfilling to learn what your customers appreciate most about you).
So what are you committed to taking action on? Or what have you done in your business to increase the amount of repeat business? Leave a comment with your feedback.
Can’t wait to read what you’ve got.
Have an incredible day!
--
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
+ Join me on FB: http://FB.com/DanMartell
+ Connect w/ me live: http://periscope.tv/danmartell
+ Tweet me: http://twitter.com/danmartell
+ Instagram awesomeness: http://instagram.com/danmartell