Journey to $100 Million: Entrepreneurship & Digital Marketing

In episode 169 of Journey to $100 Million, Kevin talks about how we are now using our CRM platform to stay organized and track performance within our sales process. We currently use HubSpot as our CRM platform here at Array Digital, but have not really been using it for all of its worth. Recently, we have just been using HubSpot loosely to store contacts and deals, but it is not something that we fully live in. Only recently, has HubSpot become something that is really important for us to fully utilize.

Glen (our sales manager) and Kevin sat down and re-did our entire sales deal pipeline. This is because, if we plan to grow our sales process beyond Kevin, Glen, and Erik, we must be able to have faith in our CRM platform. When there are just a few individuals running sales, it is easy for everyone to know what is going on, talk, and meet all the time. Between the three, there is very good clarity.  Not only that, but as of now, we are not a high transaction type of business. We usually bring in a client or two a week, and that allows us to easily keep a good pulse of what we are tracking and to know what we are doing.

But, Array Digital is growing. This means that we are going to have more people coming in on sales, and we need to have all this information in place. It has been okay how we have been using HubSpot in the past, but now it is time to live in HubSpot. Glen is now going to be required to keep his contacts and deals up to date in HubSpot, and Kevin will be running reports on this information. This is not to keep tabs on Glen, but instead to make sure everything is organized and up to date. If we were to hire another salesperson that may not have as much experience, it is essential to know this information is organized and up to date. This will help us monitor a new sales employee, track their success, and most importantly - help them improve and coach them.

It is essential to see who has what account, and who is tracking what company so that there is no overlap and allows us to run forecast reports. We are just now starting to figure this out, so be sure to listen in on future episodes to learn more! We are going to plan to have sales pipeline meetings weekly in order to ensure everything is up to date. This will ensure that our contacts, pipeline, notes, and calls are all up to date. We will review where we are in the pipeline, how much revenue we should expect, and see if we can start forecasting what the next week/month is going to look like. Right now we use HubSpot, but if you use other CRMs that you feel are more beneficial, please reach out!

—

Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

—

Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is the also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

Have you ever heard the concept of a mastermind group? In episode 168 of Journey to $100 Million, listen in as Erik shares with you what a mastermind group is, as well as how it has benefited him throughout his career. When in a mastermind group, you are surrounded by minded individuals, and get together on a regular basis to talk about your business, how you can grow your business, and discuss different techniques you can try in order to get ahead.

Erik goes to a couple different mastermind group meetings, but one in particular is interesting. This is because, this mastermind meeting in particular, is a mini-mastermind; meaning he meets with just one other person: Kevin Griffin. Kevin Griffin is an old buddy of Erik’s from his software development days. Kevin and Erik still keep in touch because they have a lot in common and are both trying to grow their agencies. They have been getting together for coffee about once every two months for many years.

This meeting is always last minute. Erik and Kevin schedule their meetings just about a week before, and catch up and talk about what is going on in each others’ professional lives, as well as bounce ideas off of each other. Since they have a history, and have done a couple of projects together, they have seen each others’ businesses grow and morph over the years - adding context as far as the updates they are providing each other. These meetings are a really good time for Erik and Kevin to sync up with one another, catch up, and learn from each other.

When you are in a mastermind group, your goal is not only to share, but also to learn. If you are just sharing, and not getting anything in return, that does not make for a good mastermind group meeting. You really need your mastermind group to be a collection of peers. Something has to be in common, and you must be aligned. You can not be in a mastermind group full of 75 million dollar companies, when you are just a 1 million dollar company. There are very different concerns and struggles between those two groups.

If you do not have a mastermind group, a mini-mastermind, or someone that you meet with on a regular basis to bounce ideas off of, Erik highly recommends doing so. It is important to see what others are doing, or to get new concepts you haven’t been exposed to. It doesn’t take that long. As a matter of fact, when Erik and Kevin Griffin meet, it is usually just an hour at 8am. Not that big of a deal, it doesn’t require juggling a lot of different events or calendar items, they just put it on their calendar - and do it!

—

Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

—

Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is the also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

On episode 167 of The Journey to $100 Million Podcast, listen in to Kevin as he shares with you the common fears a client may have before and after a sale. These fears arise with any business, and we have dealt with them at Array Digital on multiple occasions. These fears that clients may have, are both real and imagined. Your client may be imagining some of these fears, but at the end of the day, these fears are still in their head.

In the first 90-days of signing, a client is on edge, and they are looking at every single thing that you are doing. These new clients are very particular, easy to make mad, documenting everything, and are looking for you to mess up. The key to these fears, is to be aware that they exist. As a sales person, your goal is to close the sale, and hand them off to the operations team. Obviously, you still stay in contact, but the operations team are the ones communicating after the sale, meeting with the client, and doing the work. Because of this, it is essential to let your operations team know about these fears. Here at Array Digital, we have taken the initiative to let our operations team know about these fears that our clients may have after we sign them. We want our team to be aware, sensitive, and communicate on a regular basis.

Some fears include: spending too much money, being taken advantage of, or mistrusting us to provide the correct services. They also want to be sure that they are not going to be embarrassed by the decision that they made. These decision makers are surrounded by their peers, or may have VP or CEO that they have to answer to. If their decision goes down the drain, they are going to be embarrassed because they are the ones who made the decision. In some cases, it could lead to termination of the decision maker.

Theses are just the most common fears - there are plenty more out there. When you think about your business, think about some of the fears your clients may have, and remember these fears will remain with them for the first 90 days after they sign. Come up with a plan and process to make sure these fears are eased, and talk to these clients to make sure that things are good to go. Create a process for these first 90 days, and stick to it!

—

Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

—

Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is the also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

Recently, we have been spending a lot of time trying to figure out who our “best” clients are. In episode 166 of Journey to $100 Million, listen in as Erik explains how and why we are categorizing our clients here at Array Digital. Believe it or not, Erik had been in business for 9 years, with Array Digital the past 2 years, and still did not know who our top clients were.

Erik had an idea about who the top 1 or 2 clients were based on revenue. But, after the top 2, he really did not know. Erik decided he had to work out a process for figuring this out. He went to Katya (who runs our books) and got a list of all our clients, and the amount of revenue they pay us on a monthly basis. After we sorted that, Erik had a rough understanding of who was at the top of the list.

Even though Erik now had this list of our top clients, he did not have any way to demark between our different types of clients. So, Erik looked at the data and saw a couple of patterns. Erik realized that some clients were spending a lot with us, a majority were spending in the middle range, and then there were some outliers at the bottom spending less than $100 a month. He then categorized these clients into different priorities.

There was priority 1,2,3, and 4. Priority 4 being the $100 or less clients. Those priority 4 clients were mainly hosting-only clients, meaning that all we do for that client is allow their website to live on our server. Once we had a grouping, we were clearly able to see who our top clients were.

Based on this grouping, Erik now knows who the top 5 or 6 clients are. We decided to treat these top priority clients like VIPs. What that meant was we would be able to give them some extra services. Every single one of our clients is still going to get the services they were promised, but VIPs are going to get just a little bit more. Be on the lookout for a future episode on how we plan on dealing with our hosting-only clients!

—

Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

—

Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is the also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

If you are an observant individual, you may have picked up on the fact that Erik is now referring to himself as Erik J. Olson. On episode 165 of Journey to $100 Million, listen in as Erik explains why it is important to differentiate yourself from others for the sake of personal branding. Erik’s name has actually deviated quite a bit over the years. Sometimes he would just say Erik, sometimes Erik Olson, and he has always signed his name as Erik J. Olson - but he rarely referred to himself that way.

The reason he uses his first name, last name, and middle initial is because he needs to distinguish himself from the other Erik Olsons in the world. Ironically, just down the street from Erik, there is an owner of a construction company by the name of Erik Olson. Not even a week ago, someone asked if Erik ran that company. Erik realized that when it came to his name, there was brand confusion.

Erik has been referring to himself this way on this podcast, as well as social media. Even though the spelling might not be exactly the same as his name for some people, it is close enough to confuse people. If you have a name that is somewhat common, or other well-known people in the world have the same name, think about using your middle initial - some people actually use their middle name and don’t use their first name at all.

The point here is to stand out. Refer to yourself in a name that is as unique as possible. What you want to do is narrow down the number of people it could be a match to. There are hundreds of Erik Olsons running around, but far fewer Erik J. Olsons. Think about how you refer to yourself, what your personal brand name is, and refer to yourself in a name that people will remember and won’t get confused about.

—

Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

—

Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is the also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

On episode 164 of Journey to $100 Million, listen in as Kevin talks about everything new dealing with sales going on here at Array Digital. As you may already know, Kevin’s main focus of the company is to bring in new revenue. Recently, we hired a sales manager to bring on to the Array Digital team. Glen, our new sales manager, has had a lot of experience in the sales world, while also building large sales teams

Glen has surprised Kevin over the past couple of months. This is because Kevin did not have that high of expectations when hiring a new sales manager. He assumed that no salesperson could bring in more revenue than himself or Erik. This is because Kevin and Erik know their business the best, sell hard, are confident and passionate, and feel that their expertise allows them to make the most sales. With Glen, this was not the case whatsoever.

Kevin and Erik don’t do cold calls, they don’t prospect, and they are not sales people - but Glen embodies all of this. Glen has been with us for about 2 and a half months, and was given a quota with 3 months to get up to speed. He has now hit his quota for the quarter as well as each month, and has already broken his quota for June halfway through the month! To date, he has brought in $11,850 of monthly recurring revenue. That is amazing, and Glen is just getting warmed up.

So far, Kevin is very impressed and excited having Glen on our team as we grow our sales process. We are going to need sales professionals if we are going to hit our $100 million dollar goal. Glen has been putting together some really good content for not just the sales team, but for operations as well. Kevin will be coming at you with a lot of sales information as we go through this new process, and is excited to share the progress and success, as well as failures. Be sure to tune in to future episodes to learn more about all we are doing with sales!

—

Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

—

Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is the also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

Erik recently had a discussion with one of his buddies at the gym that had to do with how people dress at work. On episode 163 of Journey to $100 Million, listen in as Erik discusses his opinion on dressing up in the workplace. This individual Erik had a conversation with comes into the Array Digital office every once in a while, and sees that our employees are dressed casually. He was confused, because in his day job, he works at a corporation where everyone dresses up in nice slacks, a button up shirt, and sometimes a tie. Here at Array Digital, we rarely do that.

This is not the first time Erik has been questioned on why he does not make his employees dress up - a couple of different individuals have asked him this over the years. Erik’s answer is simple: he doesn’t care! What Erik cares about is if his employees are producing quality work, getting this work done on time, and if they are meeting our core values. That is what is important! No where in Array Digital’s core values does it say you must dress up. If you put on a tie, you are not a better person for that!

All that being said, there is a perception when you meet a new person. In our case, it is when we are meeting a new prospective client for the first time. Still, Erik would never ask anyone to wear a tie, but you also do not want to look like a slob. First impressions are hard to overcome. For example, say you are pitching a lawyer for the first time. You are going into their domain where they are dressing up in suits, so you shouldn’t be wearing shorts, flip-flops, or jeans. The key is to think about the situation you are walking into.

All that being said, if you are in the office: Erik does not care what you wear. Not only that, but even Erik came into the office wearing shorts last week because he had no meetings, and it was hot outside! It didn’t affect his quality of work, his ability to lead the company, or his ability to collaborate and communicate. When you are thinking about your employees and staff, think about what matters and what doesn’t. Think about your core values, serving your customers, doing the best work you can, making money, and growing your company. Those are the things that matter!

—

Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

—

Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is the also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

In a recent episode, Kevin had talked about how we are starting to pursue our dream clients here at Array Digital, and have put together a top 100 prospect list. This is something we put together as a team, and these are the top prospects in our region that we wish to go after. On episode 162 of Journey to $100 Million, listen in as Kevin talks about the process we have put into place on how we are going to go after these prospects!

In the first step, we identify the best contact for the prospect. That person is the decision maker, or the individual who would potentially hire us to do work for them. The goal is to get this individuals name, phone number, and email. Once we have that information, we put this information into a Google Sheet which is available to our marketing team. Then, we begin a 3-week brand awareness campaign; that is, a campaign showing that Array Digital exists, shows what we do + the services we provide, and gets the message across how we are able to provide services that could be beneficial to them. To implement this campaign, we try to get the prospect's Facebook profile ID and advertise to them on Facebook. 

After that, we switch this prospect in Facebook to a 12-week consideration campaign. When this is going on, the account executive will send the individual a LinkedIn request. On day 5 of this 12-week campaign, the account executive sends an email with a value proposition, plus a promise to give them a call. Finally, on day 7 of the consideration campaign, the account executive calls and has the first “ask,” which is asking for a meeting or a request for their time.

After the 12 weeks have gone by, we put the prospect into a long-term nurturing campaign. We remove them from the Facebook advertising, and the account executive convinces the prospect to join the company newsletter. This company newsletter is an email we send once a month giving info on digital trends and things going on in the company that are of relevance to them. Throughout this nurturing process we are staying in front of them so that hopefully, when the time is right, they will think of us and give us a call.

This campaign is in progress right now and although we do not have it all flushed out, we will continue to share as we go. Kevin would love to hear from you what your process may be. Hit him up on Facebook or LinkedIn, or shoot him an email at [email protected]!

—

Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

—

Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is the also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

Do you celebrate wins like you discuss losses? On episode 161 of Journey to $100 Million, listen in as Erik explains the importance of celebrating wins with your team, and not focusing solely on your losses. It is okay if you don’t celebrate your wins the same as losses, because Erik occasionally does the same. Losses are actually something Erik digs into deeply, and likes the opportunity to figure out why/how we lost, how to get better, and how we can ensure we do not make the same mistake again.

But what about wins? There are a lot of wins that happen in your business on the way to achieving your goal. For us here at Array Digital, Erik is not going to let his guard down until we have achieved our $100 million goal. Even when we hit this goal, Erik explains there is going to be more that he wants to achieve. But, between now and the time we achieve our goal, we must celebrate wins.

A lot of wins happen in our business, on a daily basis. These are small wins: things that you should recognize in the moment and declare that it is a win. It is important to understand that it is okay to say something is good, even when you know there is something bad that can still be fixed.

One of the ways we do this at Array Digital, is in our everyday huddle, everyone speaks about their plan for the day, any issues they might have, and most importantly, their win from yesterday. This win can be personal or professional, we just want to hear from everyone on the team what their wins are on a daily basis.

Beyond that, there are wins in your business that happen often, like signing a new client for example. These are the sorts of wins that you can be celebrating all the time. It is okay to recognize these wins and celebrate a little bit. Maybe take your team out to lunch, bring a cake in, or just say great job to everyone on the team. People like to be thanked, and if there's an opportunity to thank them, just say thank you! Celebrate the wins in your office, because it is going to be a long journey, and you don’t want to wait until the end.

—

Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

—

Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is the also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

On episode 160 of Journey to $100 Million, listen in as Kevin explains the importance of trading value while meeting with prospects. As you are trying to grow your business, it is essential to be prepared to trade value for the time you spend talking to prospects. For us at Array Digital, we either set up an initial 15-minute phone call, or an hour long meeting that includes a full digital marketing review in order to start a relationship with potential clients.

Even in this 15-minute call, we make sure that we are giving value of some sort. If you have a 15-minute phone call with Kevin, whether you decide to hire us or not, he is going to do the best he can to give you some useful information. We might not be a good fit, and may go our separate ways, but Kevin guarantees that you will get some sort of value out of the call.

The same goes for the hour-long meetings. In these meetings, we sit down with a prospect, and have a full digital marketing review for them. We spend a lot of time developing these reviews, and even give them a copy. Information like their online presence, website, social media, SEO, etc. is included, and we hope that this is of value to the prospect. Whether or not we do business with these clients, we leave these reports with them no matter what.

If you sit down with us here at Array Digital, or just have a simple 15-minute call, we want to ensure we are bringing value. By doing that, we hope that even if the client does not sign, that they will tell someone else that we are worth the time, we give good information, and that they recommend meeting with us. Bringing value to the table can lead to gaining referrals from prospects!

—

Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

—

Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is the also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.