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04: Building & Running Remote Teams
Helpful links from the episode:
- Whitespark Review Checker Tool
- Jira
- ClickUp
- IFA 2019 Conference
- LSA Conference
- GatherUp TextBack feature
FULL SHOW NOTES
00:11 Aaron Weiche: Episode Four - Building and Running Remote Teams.
00:16 INTRO: Welcome to the SAAS Venture Podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SAAS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins, and losses shared in each episode, from Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
[music]
00:42 AW: Glad to be back on the SaaS Venture Podcast. I'm Aaron.
00:46 Darren Shaw: I'm Darren.
00:47 AW: We are back to recording action, probably three weeks between our last episode, as we've both been a little bit busy taking on other things.
00:56 DS: Yeah.
00:56 AW: And with that, for me, some of the highlights or things that have gone on, one, we did our first large show as an exhibitor. We were at the International Franchise Association convention in Las Vegas, and that was really great. Probably somewhere between 35 and 50 what I would consider solid conversations where we have the contact info of who the buyer would likely be and understand a lot about where they're at in their scenario and things like that. So that was really exciting, and good to get past, too, 'cause there were a lot of unknowns in not having done a show of that size with thousands of attendees. I wanna say there was 4,000 at the show, so that was really helpful to get through.
01:42 DS: You talk to Andrew Beckman there? He's from Location3. He goes on to me about how awesome that show is, it's great...
01:47 AW: Yeah, those guys... Yeah, Location3 had two or three booths there. I didn't make it over to talk to them. I know a couple others from that organization as well, but I saw their booths, didn't talk to them. I was busy talking to prospects, man.
02:01 DS: That's great. So okay, you said you talked to about 35 solid leads when you were there, and then how many of those leads have converted to follow-up conversations, and have you actually closed any of them since you were at the show?
02:17 AW: Right, so that's the big next phase. The show was just last week, got home Thursday night, and then yeah, this week has been sending out emails, a few responses, and trying to get demos in place. So that's kind of the next piece, and the next of figuring out, "All right, what do those numbers look like?" Because you're totally correct, it's one thing to be excited about... And you need those conversations to start top-of-funnel there, but it is how fast and who are the ones that you can actually get to the table and turn into customers? So I'll definitely have more data on that the next time you and I talk.
02:53 DS: And know what I'd love to know? I would love to know, okay, this is what you spent to go to the show in terms of getting the booth, cost of travel, cost of expenses with hotel and everything while you were there. Then looking at it six months later, and then calculating the lifetime value of the customers that you were able to close from it, and determining what's the ROI on that? Because I always wonder that about exhibiting at conferences. And IFA sounds pretty good, 35 solid leads sounds really good to me, and so I'm curious to know if you actually have a positive ROI in the end.
03:29 AW: Yep, next episode I'll share those numbers and anything of what we're looking at. The really good news, no, it's not cheap to do it, but it only takes a couple of decent deals to easily make that back. And the other thing that I look at, too, is five of our competitors were there, and if we're not there in that conversation and in that room, then we're already losing. So there is some brand awareness and being seen. And this is our first time there, too, we had a lot of people say, "Oh, I've never seen you guys before." So repetition's important. We already signed up for their 2020 event in Orlando. But yeah, next episode, I'll report on where I'm at with those 'cause it definitely is of interest to me as well.
04:08 DS: Yeah, for sure. And there's another side benefit, I think, of these things. So you might have talked to 35 people, but GatherUp was looked at by hundreds, thousands of people. They saw you, they looked at your banner, they got the sense that you do review stuff and that two months later when they're thinking about it, they're like, "Yeah, we should consider GatherUp, we know they're one of the players in this space."
04:34 AW: Absolutely.
04:35 DS: And so there's other stuff, you can't measure that, you don't know who those people were, and you don't know if it's because they saw you at the IFA show.
04:42 AW: Yep, totally correct. And some of the conversations were a little longer term where people are like, "All right, we're in with somebody until this date, but let's stay in touch because I definitely wanna talk to you. It seems like you have more to offer or would be better to work with." So completely.
04:58 DS: Well, that sounds exciting, good.
05:00 AW: Yeah, totally exciting. We were supposed to have a big feature release today on our new inbound text feature called TextBack. We ran into some snags through a carrier, through Verizon this week and kinda had to self-diagnose between Verizon and Twilio, and trying to work with either one of those is almost no help, so a lot of self-investigation. We have a handle on it now, but we had to push back a couple of days till a Monday launch, which pains me, but totally the right thing to do because we couldn't push it out without it working for one of the major carriers consistently.
05:37 DS: Can you describe that feature? How does it work, TextBack?
05:40 AW: Yeah, so TextBack, each location would have a number, so a local restaurant or a local store would have a mobile number that any customer in the store would see signage or on their receipt that says, "Text the word feedback to this number," And then it auto-replies with the link and says, "Great, now leave us feedback on how your experience was. So it's a easy way for a consumer to self-opt-in, and especially in industries like restaurant or retail, where giving up your email address or your phone number might not be part of the purchase process, but it gives real-time access.
06:14 DS: Oh my god, I love it. That's so good! I really think about that for some of these retail type clients that... They're not collecting emails or phone numbers at the checkout. They don't have time for that, they're not messing around, they're just ringing people's orders, though, right?
06:31 AW: Yes.
06:32 DS: And so that kind of a thing. And you could also put it on a card that you drop in a bag, right?
06:36 AW: Absolutely. Any print way or signage way you can get it in front of them can absolutely be used, and yeah, just as you alluded to, you get real-time feedback, you get them through your review process, those are all wins for the customer and the business. And then, yeah, then you can capture their mobile number or their email for future communication as well. So I'm really excited about it, and so that was really hard to know that it was gonna come out today and then be like, "Oh yeah, just kidding, guys. It's gonna be a couple more days," but better to get it right.
07:08 DS: I'm super familiar w...
View all episodes
By Aaron Weiche
5
1010 ratings
Helpful links from the episode:
- Whitespark Review Checker Tool
- Jira
- ClickUp
- IFA 2019 Conference
- LSA Conference
- GatherUp TextBack feature
FULL SHOW NOTES
00:11 Aaron Weiche: Episode Four - Building and Running Remote Teams.
00:16 INTRO: Welcome to the SAAS Venture Podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SAAS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins, and losses shared in each episode, from Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
[music]
00:42 AW: Glad to be back on the SaaS Venture Podcast. I'm Aaron.
00:46 Darren Shaw: I'm Darren.
00:47 AW: We are back to recording action, probably three weeks between our last episode, as we've both been a little bit busy taking on other things.
00:56 DS: Yeah.
00:56 AW: And with that, for me, some of the highlights or things that have gone on, one, we did our first large show as an exhibitor. We were at the International Franchise Association convention in Las Vegas, and that was really great. Probably somewhere between 35 and 50 what I would consider solid conversations where we have the contact info of who the buyer would likely be and understand a lot about where they're at in their scenario and things like that. So that was really exciting, and good to get past, too, 'cause there were a lot of unknowns in not having done a show of that size with thousands of attendees. I wanna say there was 4,000 at the show, so that was really helpful to get through.
01:42 DS: You talk to Andrew Beckman there? He's from Location3. He goes on to me about how awesome that show is, it's great...
01:47 AW: Yeah, those guys... Yeah, Location3 had two or three booths there. I didn't make it over to talk to them. I know a couple others from that organization as well, but I saw their booths, didn't talk to them. I was busy talking to prospects, man.
02:01 DS: That's great. So okay, you said you talked to about 35 solid leads when you were there, and then how many of those leads have converted to follow-up conversations, and have you actually closed any of them since you were at the show?
02:17 AW: Right, so that's the big next phase. The show was just last week, got home Thursday night, and then yeah, this week has been sending out emails, a few responses, and trying to get demos in place. So that's kind of the next piece, and the next of figuring out, "All right, what do those numbers look like?" Because you're totally correct, it's one thing to be excited about... And you need those conversations to start top-of-funnel there, but it is how fast and who are the ones that you can actually get to the table and turn into customers? So I'll definitely have more data on that the next time you and I talk.
02:53 DS: And know what I'd love to know? I would love to know, okay, this is what you spent to go to the show in terms of getting the booth, cost of travel, cost of expenses with hotel and everything while you were there. Then looking at it six months later, and then calculating the lifetime value of the customers that you were able to close from it, and determining what's the ROI on that? Because I always wonder that about exhibiting at conferences. And IFA sounds pretty good, 35 solid leads sounds really good to me, and so I'm curious to know if you actually have a positive ROI in the end.
03:29 AW: Yep, next episode I'll share those numbers and anything of what we're looking at. The really good news, no, it's not cheap to do it, but it only takes a couple of decent deals to easily make that back. And the other thing that I look at, too, is five of our competitors were there, and if we're not there in that conversation and in that room, then we're already losing. So there is some brand awareness and being seen. And this is our first time there, too, we had a lot of people say, "Oh, I've never seen you guys before." So repetition's important. We already signed up for their 2020 event in Orlando. But yeah, next episode, I'll report on where I'm at with those 'cause it definitely is of interest to me as well.
04:08 DS: Yeah, for sure. And there's another side benefit, I think, of these things. So you might have talked to 35 people, but GatherUp was looked at by hundreds, thousands of people. They saw you, they looked at your banner, they got the sense that you do review stuff and that two months later when they're thinking about it, they're like, "Yeah, we should consider GatherUp, we know they're one of the players in this space."
04:34 AW: Absolutely.
04:35 DS: And so there's other stuff, you can't measure that, you don't know who those people were, and you don't know if it's because they saw you at the IFA show.
04:42 AW: Yep, totally correct. And some of the conversations were a little longer term where people are like, "All right, we're in with somebody until this date, but let's stay in touch because I definitely wanna talk to you. It seems like you have more to offer or would be better to work with." So completely.
04:58 DS: Well, that sounds exciting, good.
05:00 AW: Yeah, totally exciting. We were supposed to have a big feature release today on our new inbound text feature called TextBack. We ran into some snags through a carrier, through Verizon this week and kinda had to self-diagnose between Verizon and Twilio, and trying to work with either one of those is almost no help, so a lot of self-investigation. We have a handle on it now, but we had to push back a couple of days till a Monday launch, which pains me, but totally the right thing to do because we couldn't push it out without it working for one of the major carriers consistently.
05:37 DS: Can you describe that feature? How does it work, TextBack?
05:40 AW: Yeah, so TextBack, each location would have a number, so a local restaurant or a local store would have a mobile number that any customer in the store would see signage or on their receipt that says, "Text the word feedback to this number," And then it auto-replies with the link and says, "Great, now leave us feedback on how your experience was. So it's a easy way for a consumer to self-opt-in, and especially in industries like restaurant or retail, where giving up your email address or your phone number might not be part of the purchase process, but it gives real-time access.
06:14 DS: Oh my god, I love it. That's so good! I really think about that for some of these retail type clients that... They're not collecting emails or phone numbers at the checkout. They don't have time for that, they're not messing around, they're just ringing people's orders, though, right?
06:31 AW: Yes.
06:32 DS: And so that kind of a thing. And you could also put it on a card that you drop in a bag, right?
06:36 AW: Absolutely. Any print way or signage way you can get it in front of them can absolutely be used, and yeah, just as you alluded to, you get real-time feedback, you get them through your review process, those are all wins for the customer and the business. And then, yeah, then you can capture their mobile number or their email for future communication as well. So I'm really excited about it, and so that was really hard to know that it was gonna come out today and then be like, "Oh yeah, just kidding, guys. It's gonna be a couple more days," but better to get it right.
07:08 DS: I'm super familiar w...