Ampliz Podcast

The hard thing today in B2B SaaS is that there are more solutions out there. All use the same channels and try to get the attention of the users. That is getting harder and more challenged. Only 4% of all B2B SAAS solutions are gaining one million ARR. Only now 4% are getting to 10 million. So Smartlook is on the way to that. But you can see that not many are on this way and it’s not an easy game.

One of the main metrics should be measured and that is customer acquisition cost versus customer lifetime value. It should be one to five and one to three. Smartlook is at one to three, up to one to five. It is doing to optimize it like for customer acquisition cost. It’s really good to have marketing automation in mind.

Smartlook has launched one in-house mobile analytics solution. In the beginning, Smartlook has only 20% user adoption rate and it has scaled to more than 40%.

On the other side, the customer lifetime value you should have solutions to your Saas platform. If you talk to your customers at functionalities, have customer success, they are really increasing your customer lifetime value and also finding that’s connected to your channels to find the right customers.

One of the most important things is a shortlist. The higher your solution is priced, the more people will search for alternatives. So if you have a big and huge competitor, be everywhere where people are searching for alternatives and you end up on the shortlist. Certainly, 72% of bias will expense shortlist by searching you as suppliers.

How do you make the complex B2B sale easier? And there are five things that I want to talk with you about, like being informed, having insights. I understand that people buy with their emotions. How to map it and make it all easier? How to lead as a salesperson?

I believe that the sales profession is a helping profession. We all do our best when we lead instead of trying to push the type of selling that isn’t very comfortable for any of us.

So let’s talk about what is going on with the B2B sales today. In B2B sales, more people now than ever are participating in the buying decisions. So if you have a complicated deal, there are, I don’t know, eight or ten people that have to talk to you and talk to each other to make this decision together. But there are also lots of other people talking to those people and giving them ideas. So it has become even more complicated.

The buying process has become more formalized, especially with crunched budgets and people being a little bit more nervous about spending money, and buyers want to reduce their risk.

In simple words, personal branding is online presence. But it has become a buzz word that we often hear. Most of the people understand the personal branding. There are so many people who tell that they don’t have a personal brand now. I highly disagree with that because if you do have any kind of social presence online you have a Personal brand.

It is very important to take care of your personal brand because that’s the very first impression someone is getting off you right there seeing your LinkedIn profile as a professional and they need to understand what you’re all about. So in simple words, a personal brand is your online reputation.

There are two ways to build your brand on LinkedIn.

When it comes to connecting and networking, you can connect with other people from a similar industry or connect with people who might be your potential clients. Before you connect with someone and before you even create content, make sure that your profile is shining and it’s optimized. So that’s the very first step for a strong personal brand. Then the next thing is to have a really good profile to create content and start connecting with other people showing them that you’re active now.

There are several techniques to create the powerful contents.

This technique is simple. You have a piece of content and you’re trying to repurpose it. You should think “how can I make it into something else?” “If it’s a video, can I make it into a blog post?” Try to define your purpose funnel what is going to happen once you have made a piece of content. Because a lot of people are screaming we need new content. It’s actually about being smarter and repurposing what you already have.

When the pandemic hit everywhere, people started saying, “don’t sell”, “don’t sell”. Nobody can sell anything. Just help people, don’t sell, and stop selling. But the fact is that selling is helping. But bad selling should not happen.

Bad selling is when people are just pushing products without understanding their requirement. It’s when you connect with someone on LinkedIn and they pitch you with their product and services and try to set up a meeting to just pitch you. That’s bad. Selling. Being consultative, you prove that you understand their requirements and offer solutions to their painpoints. That is when the selling will be admirable.

Consultative selling is focused on the buyer and not just the buyer, but the buyer’s world. If you can know enough about your buyers to know who their customers are, an example in the pandemic, if you knew that your buyer only sold to hotels and airlines and restaurants. They were probably not people that you wanted to talk to right away because they were in a crisis mode.

However, if they were other people who are involved with telecommunications and remote work, they were going crazy and they were busy. The idea that you should personalize and sell individually. Don’t just spam people with the messages but know who you are calling.

Often we think the more expensive our product or service is, the more information we need to give. We need to create scopes of work, contracts, legal ease, and massive implementation plans. And that actually will hinder and delay your sales cycle.

One of the reasons why this was created is because people got confused. They could not comprehend what a proposal should be. A plan is not a scope of work or a letter of intention or a contract or any lengthy word documents.

Ultimately what it will do is make your client’s eyes glaze over, and they will be like, I don’t want to go through this. This proposal looks like work, a lot of it. Maybe when I have the time to go through this, it might be the right time to implement.

Do not confuse your proposal with any of these other documents.

Your proposal has a particular place in the sales cycle, and therefore it is a selling document. It is there to sell.

There is a huge difference between reel life and real life. When it comes to sales, being practical and natural is more effective than being artificial. Julie has years of experience in the film industry and also she has gained expertise in selling on camera.  Generally, when people come in front of the camera, either they become so stiff that looks artificial or so nervous. Sometimes, to show confidence, people try to act being relaxed and sit in a relaxed position. 

While it is good on one hand, on the other hand, it creates an impression of having low energy or not interested in talking right away. Both are not good to work as a salesperson. The ideal position is to sit up straight and even to lean forward about 10 or 15% because that looks like you're on the edge of your seat waiting to talk to this person or waiting to hear what they have to say. So that's the type of energy you want to bring to the sales calls. So you have to bring a high level of energy and then you have to know how to use it within the confines of this stage.

 Two Top Techniques Julie has shared two top techniques that will help us to be natural and confident in front of the camera. 

• Eye Contact 

Eye contact is important while you are on camera because it helps to build a relationship and increase friendliness. When you don’t look at the camera or you don’t keep eye contact, it feels like you are not that attentive and not paying attention. When you are on a video call and talking to your prospect, adjust your camera, and keep proper eye contact that will give your prospect confidence on you. 

• Make the camera your friend 

The above sentence may sound silly but the truth lies behind it. If you don’t feel the camera is your friend, it will be an obstacle between you and your customer because of which your customer may lose confidence in you. In order to make the camera your friend, name it and try to talk with it frequently. On a psychological level, it gives you confidence that you are talking to your friend and your customer. Your confident and energetic talk will attract your customers.

Your brand is more than just your appearance. Many people think it's like your glasses, the cool hat that you wear at work, your fonts and colors, and various other things. Yes, that does have a factor in it, but your brand is what makes you tick. It's about you.  

Three things define your brand. Remember this one year try to start and build an online presence in a community and brainstorming ideas for content.  

1. Your core values:   Three things define your brand and from a moral standpoint as well. What do you want people to remember you?  

a. I want people to know that I'm real and genuine. I talk about real-life things that have happened in my past, what defines me as a person, and what makes me tick. 

b. What do you want the people to know you for? I want people to know me for being helpful to others and take that initiative because that's what I love to do.  

c. A judgment-free zone: My inbox, my comment section, everything is open. Because I've made committed many mistakes throughout my life, I want people to know that they can be you know they can share their personal stories with me.   

2. Your uniqueness:  I want you to ask yourself, "what makes me different?" and express that uniqueness. You have your share of experiences, your past, and the challenges that have made you who you are today. Talk about that. You know you have failed in life, yet you've turned them into real-life lessons and implemented those learnings. You know you are funny, quirky, and creative. Express it and follow your uniqueness throughout your content. To truly stand out and set yourself apart from the rest.  

3. The company you work for and a product and service that you sell:  If you own your own business, you kind of learn the lines here between personal branding and company branding. But it has a lot to do with one another. The reason is that when you're selling a product or working for a company, people will associate your brand with that company and the product. You're selling it's just how it is, especially if you have it plastered all over your LinkedIn. All that good stuff, so ask yourself does the company you work for has a bad reputation in the market, and you don't want to be associated with them. Then having maybe not now but having an exit plan is probably the best thing for you.  

 You sell and endorse a product that you don't believe in. That's huge, and if your company and your values are to provide impeccable customer service, then you have to follow through with your commitments to your clients. In the age of social media, the consumer has much power in the market. Therefore, one bad experience can affect your brand and your company's brand. So, you need to know and believe in the product you're selling. You also have to stand by your company's values and build a good reputation.  In that sense, so implement these three points while you're putting yourself out there. You know you're building a community. There was a time that we did not mix business and pleasure in personal life. It was us who didn't do it. We only really celebrated our wins and not our past failures. We were fake. 

Content should make sense, and today we consume differently. We consume based on emotion because we are all humans. We long for real connections.   What real people want is authenticity. To be truly authentic is not to be like the rest; just celebrate what makes you unique. Your followers will genuinely get to know you. When people watch my content, they genuinely get to know me as a person. It is how you place your unique footprint on a personal brand.

What is Customer Experience? 

Every time someone interacts with you as a part of their experience and it forms feelings. So the experience lives as feelings, then they become thoughts and then they become stories. These stories are what our customers tell each other about us. That is when they share their experience in online reviews and customer testimonials. Hence it is a slightly abstract thing that these are some of the ways that it becomes manifest though and some of the ways that the experience lives.  

Customer experience is basically synonymous with the brand experience. Your brand is what you promise to your customers. When you meet customers’ experience, you build your company brand. People are forming feelings and thoughts and telling stories about what it's like to work with you all of the time.  How to make the experience personal? 

As Ethan focused on feelings and thoughts of the customers, making the experience personal is important which can be your differentiator from others.  According to Maya Angelou, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did but people will never forget how you made them feel that feeling is the foundation for our thoughts and ultimately our behaviors.”  Hence here are the ways to make the customer experience personal.  

- Face to Face meeting 

- Micro Conversation 

- Video relationship

How to do LinkedIn lead regeneration? 

 For LinkedIn, this is what most people do while trying to generate a lead. You send an invite. If you think the person is a prospect and you, most of the time, you don't have any note. If you have, it will have something like "Hey, I found your profile interesting." or some random note like that, which is spammy and which is cliched and repetitive.  The other person doesn't care who you are; they probably accept you as well. And out of a hundred invites that you send, 30 will get approved. And the moment they recognize what you do is send a message, copy paste a high level, 3000-word essay. Then say in the memo, "if you're interested, let me know. "  

Every day I get on LinkedIn, I get bombarded by sales pitches. I have no problem with sales pitches as long as they are right. I get bombarded for sales pitches about random B2B tools. Random things which are not related to me, and this happens, right?  What you have to do is relationship building, so let me tell you one way of doing it, right. I'm going to keep it very straightforward. You send an invite back with a personalized note. How can you personalize a letter? You can talk about multiple things, things that are in commonality.  Let's say you are a marketer. The person is a marketer as well. So what do people use in marketing? 

So you can talk about, Hey, I extensively use Google analytics or extensive use of Facebook ads. And I've just figured out the right way of campaign budget optimization. I would love to jam with you and see if there's anything that we could figure out together.  Find common ground and that common ground. It cannot be broad. If not able to find common ground. 

Are the people you want to connect to creating content on LinkedIn? Have they shared anything on LinkedIn? All you have to do is find something that they wrote very recently.  Let's say I talk about, I spoke about, you're sending me a custom note. I spoke about Facebook acquiring 10% of the equity stake in Jio. You can talk about it.  "Hey Bill, I found an article on the Facebook acquisition of Jio, and I find it very interesting. We'd love to get in touch."  

Now I know for a fact someone who send me an invite has put in some effort. 8% of the total invites that go out have a personalized message. So the moment you put a message, your chances of getting accepted already goes up. Put a very personalized message; the chances go for triples or becomes four X of it.  The moment they connect, you don't send them a sales pitch. My friends, if you send them a sales pitch, it's the same story all over again, right?

First and foremost, with the situation right now, people are worried about the present and future situation. Salespeople should focus on right now on getting emotional about the sales process and not about the outcome. And when you get focused on the process, that's where the results come in. You should focus on the sales intro; the questions you need to ask, are some of the crucial things. For example, right now, the most important thing is to be creative and innovative through your process. 

The questions you need to ask yourself are:  

1. So do you know how to send videos 

2. Do you know how to leverage social media 

3. Are you doing the right 

4. Are the subject lines you are using right now are impactful 

5. Can you help everyone right now across the board  

 If people say, outbound is dead. No! It's not. It just now requires more research more creativity and innovativeness across the board more than ever before. So these are the key things that need focusing on right now from an outbound perspective.  Everyone is still using outbound. It is not dead yet. 

However, there is a drastic change in the way it was done in the past. Here are the four things that you need focusing on 

1. Have a process 

2. Focus on the process 

3. Don't be too emotional about the outcomes 

4. Be creative and innovative  

Being creative and innovative means right now is what something different is that you can do. So, how can you interrupt patterns? What could you be doing differently is videos, can be sending direct mail (digital mail instead of physical mail) right because people may be afraid of doing it. These are things that are extremely helpful for right now, and people have seen great results. With so think about what is something that you can do that's creative, innovative everyone.  

Understand what your buyers are currently going through. Do a client roundtable. You will get many insights about what the clients are going through. Now I can have personalized messages around that, and now I can have questions around that. I'm right now not only way more creative, but also, I'm talking directly in the buyers' language. It is what matters the most right now.  

Write it all down in a spreadsheet or a sticky note. You now know and understand what the buyers are going through right now. That's a way to do outbound still because you have to speak their language at this point.   Also, the critical factor is ICP's ICP. So what that means is the people that you're targeting right now are their buyers still making money. Because if your customers' customer is not making money, then your buyer is not going to buy whatever you're selling. So think about the ICP's ICP.   

The next thing is "Binge growth, not Netflix." I've been saying this a lot lately, all right. It is time to be focusing on upgrading your skills. There's now a separation of the average sales rep and the prodigious sales reps. If you were just going with the motions, this is not a time for you. Right now, you have to be diligent in your process; otherwise, you're just going to get passed by other people who have been diligent on that process.   Lastly, the thing you have to say at the end of the day is, if you can prospect through this you can get through anything. Your resume becomes bulletproof.