SalesFounders - Startup Sales Strategy, Venture Capital, Entrepreneur, and Sales Development

Traffic & Funnels co-founder, Taylor Welch, joins us to talk about the challenges entrepreneurs face when it comes to lead growth and predictable funnel strategies. On this episode, Taylor walks us through the anatomy of traffic & funnel strategy as well as the secret behind their 6 million dollar webinar. We'll talk about why validation is the key to establishing a powerful marketing message and the 4 steps they use to convert your core message into lead faucets of predictable revenue.

• The importance of validation and how to identify your ideal marketing message
• Why Paid Traffic is the key to establishing control and predictable growth
• How to make the validation process more efficient - simplification and finding your “one thing”
• Stop complicating the buying process by keeping your messaging clear and simple. 
• Money and the 4 ingredients of a predictable marketing strategy
  1. A really good piece of content . . . just one.
  2. Great strategy to drive people to that content and self-filter
  3. Funnel to transfer filtered leads to a qualifying call
  4. A sales process to convert qualified leads into paying customers. 
• Time - How to shift from trading hours for dollars and generate leverage. 
• Feeder Funnels and how to build a lead faucet with paid traffic. 
• 3 Marketing KPI’s  
  • Leads - how many people are coming in at the top?
  • Consumption - how many are sticking around? 
  • Application - how many are going to the next step?  
• Surround yourself with the right people - you normalize what is constantly in front of you. 

"You have to know the levers that correlate to income and chose not to do the thousands of things that take away from the activities that matter." 

Heather Havenwood is a serial entrepreneur, best-selling author, and authority on the subjects of digital marketing and sales coaching. Heather is helping entrepreneurs "break the rules" and implement proven marketing and sales systems. As an Entrepreneur.com contributor, performance coach, and one of Huffington Posts Top 50 Must Follow Women Entrepreneurs, Heather is a power-house when it comes to entrepreneurship. She joins us this week to talk about her challenging journey in entrepreneurship, sales systems, and why more women need to give themselves "permission" to thrive as entrepreneurs. 

• The pursuit of freedom through entrepreneurship 
• Reinventing yourself in the face of adversity
• Tapping into the creating process of entrepreneurship
• Sales Systems - is your startup really prepared for growth?
• Messaging and why entrepreneurship struggle to connect with customers. 
• Women Entrepreneurs - why more women need to give themselves "permission" to succeed. 
• Get comfortable breaking the rules!

Alex Hermozi has perfected the sales launch. What started as a passion for weightlifting and fitness, became a $55k investment in his own gym and a steep learning curve to profitability. In time, Alex figured out how to scale his efforts into 6 highly profitable gyms. Realizing the value of the "system" he had developed, Alex sold his gyms and turned his attention to the thousands of struggling gym owners across the country. Today, his "gym launch" system helps gym owners fill their gyms in less than a month and scale towards million dollar businesses. "Launching a gym is like baking a cake" says Alex, and on this weeks episode, he shares a number of his plays that can help any startup identify the ingredients of a powerful sales launch. 

"The amount of money you make is in direct proportion to the number of offers you make." -Frank Kern

• The 5 Stages of the Gym Launch System: 
  1. Lead Generation
  2. Lead Nurture
  3. Sales Event
  4. Fulfillment
  5. Resell and Ascension
• Customer acquisition costs vs. cash flow
• How to leverage a single marketing strategy through multiple campaigns 
• How to get your customers to front the cost of getting more customers
• Two reasons LBO's (low barrier offers) might be killing your startup 
• Creating "front-end" offers with higher retention rates
• Increasing revenue through exception customers service, not scale
• How to replicate your systems into a training program for new sales employees
• Establishing clear leadership and accountability 

Startup Accelerators have become a powerful source of guidance and support for aspiring entrepreneurs all over the world. One of the pioneers of startup acceleration is Robb Kunz, a seasoned entrepreneur and angel investor. Following his seemingly endless struggle to find entrepreneurs with sufficiently validated business models, Robb co-founded  Boom Startup, a mentorship-based seed accelerator for entrepreneurs in the disciplines of technology, education, government, and space. 7 years into this rapidly changing industry, Robb joins us on SalesFounders to talk about the future of seed acceleration, and some of the most valuable lessons he has learned from 18 exits and thousands of entrepreneurs. 

• The biggest problems angel investors face in todays startup world
• 3 ways Boom Startup is changing the nature of seed acceleration
• The 5 stages of validation within Boom Startup
• What are the components of a great founding team?
• Tracking 18 exits, these are the two consistent traits of the highest performing startups
• How to create profitable relationships with channel partners and resellers
• How to build a winning sales culture from the start
• The value of bringing outside sales guidance before making the big sales hires

Following a lucrative exit from the sale of his first company, Shane Cox let it all ride on his second venture that quickly became an unscalable and capital exhaustive business that bled him dry. After liquidated all of his assets, and selling the last of his prized possessions, Shane doubled-down on the one promising component of his solution - the QBall - a microphone imbedded into a dodge-ball. Over the course of the next two years, Shane scraped by, often sleeping in his car to afford any event that would allow him to pitch his product. In time, the product gained traction and on his third attempt, Shane was invited onto the set of Shark Tank. 

This Sunday, October 1st, Shane's moment in the tank will be featured on the season premier. On this week's episode of SalesFounders, we explore the business Shane has built and his rollercoaster ride of validation and traction that has led him to one of the most coveted entrepreneurial stages.  

More than a third of the US workforce is comprised of freelancers. Freelancing has become a trillion dollar industry that can be challenging for founders to navigate. With so many experts to choose from, it can be hard to know what to look for, and how to integrate hired talent into your organization.

My guest this week is Connor Gillivan. After selling more than $25 million on Amazon from his dorm room, Connor went on to create FreeeUp.com, a freelancer marketplace that connects businesses with the top 1% of freelancers in eCommerce, digital marketing, virtual assistance, and web development. Not only has Connor leveraged freelancers to build his Amazon business, but he has also built FreeeUp into a multi-million dollar business using...well...freelancers. Connor joins us this week to talk about this booming industry, the challenges he has faced in his journey, and why freelancers might be the perfect solution for your startup.

Every entrepreneur needs an occasional moment of honest, personal reflection. How are things really going, and to what extent you are aligning with the needs of your business? The tendency for most founders is to add more process and clutter when they should be finding ways to simplify. 

Meet Steve Krebs; the accountability coach. His mission is to rescue entrepreneurs from the process holes and bottlenecks, cut through the BS, and establish some accountability to systems that generate growth. This is an episode unlike any we've done. Join us for a blunt, no holds barred assault on mediocrity, fear, and the limiting beliefs that are robbing your business. 

• The biggest personal challenges that prevent entrepreneurs from finding success?
• Protection, Projection, Posturing and Punishing - How to break out of the unworthiness cycle 
• Two questions to embrace vulnerability and identify exactly what is holding you back
• Why vulnerability as an entrepreneur will actually help you succeed
• How to develop your weaknesses into strengths
• Living with Purpose and why your purpose can change throughout your life 
• The power of meditation - taking time each to day to reconnect with yourself
• Keeping it simple - focusing on base hits, not home runs
• The power of being consistent and persistent
• Exploring the coaching business - how to find and convert clients 
• Framing the deal to allow your customers to qualify to work with you

Burnout can be a major problem for entrepreneurs . In spite of a seemingly limitless supply of automation tools, entrepreneurs still over-extend themselves to the point of exhaustion. Every entrepreneur needs help, and specifically, the right help. Meet Nicole Wipp - entrepreneur and small business consultant whose speciality is helping entrepreneurs create powerful teams. Leadership requires a very different mindset than entrepreneurship and on this episode, Nicole shares 5 strategies that will help you develop and lead a world-class organization. There's a good chance your next hire is the not the right hire.

• Why the majority of entrepreneurs burn-out before they find success
• The power of "letting go" to realize sustainable growth
• Why entrepreneurship and leadership can create conflict with each other
• Self awareness and the importance of knowing your strengths
• Developing your own hiring plan that complements your weaknesses.
• How to find the best people for your business and reduce turnover
• The secret to employee engagement - a little trick that goes a long way
• The challenges with virtual teams
• 4 Resources to help build your team

On the heels of a failed startup in 2002, Aaron Ross stumbled into a call-center position at Salesforce.com. Looking for sales perspective, Aaron discovered something much bigger. The discovery, covered in his best-selling book Predictable Revenue, was a revolutionary approach to outbound selling that led SalesForce from $5M to $100M in sales. Since then, Aaron has helped companies like Uber, SAP, and Oracle figure out how to build scalable, predictable revenue. These strategies, as well as the concepts of "hypergrowth" covered in his recent book with co-author Jason Lemkin, are a just few of the topics we cover as we explore the secrets of predictable sales growth.

“The things that will change your growth rate are often the things you don’t feel comfortable doing.”

• How Aaron went from a failed startup to helping SalesForce.com grow from $5m to $100M in revenue
• The sales challenges at Salesforce that led to "Predictable Revenue" and Cold Calling 2.0
• 3 factors to determine whether an outbound strategy is right for your organization
• How to get your SDR's to think for themselves and away from email template fixation
• A compensation model for Outbound SDR's
• The sales mindset or SDRs - how to promote consultative selling and adaptability
• "Nailing A Niche" and knowing when you’re not ready to grow
• How to cross the trust gap and reach customers who don’t know you
• How to go upmarket and increase your average deal size
• From 0-9 kids in 6 years - how to promote an entrepreneur work-life balance

Surviving the early stages of a startup to reach growth is a significant milestone for any founder. It is also the beginning of new chapter of challenges and opportunities. There is a science to accelerating growth, and few who know it better than Greg Warnock, managing director and co-founder of Mercato Partners. 

Greg is a technologist, innovator, and PhD-equipped entrepreneur who is well versed in every stage of entrepreneurship. On this episode, Greg walks us through his formula for success, the benchmarks he uses to qualify opportunities, the 3 pillars of growth that define the Mercato performance team, and some of the most common pitfalls that challenge and stifle growth. Drawing on a portfolio that includes companies like SkullCandy, Domo, Stance, and Observepoint, this episode is guaranteed to change the way you look at growth. 

• The qualities of top performing entrepreneurs and how to spot them
• Differentiating between Venture and Growth: The origin story of Mercato
• 4 benchmarks Mercato uses to to evaluate their investments
• 3 "red flags" of unsustainable growth
• The 3 biggest growth challenges and how to avoid them
• Why pricing and process are the most costly sales mistakes entrepreneurs are making
• How Skull Candy turned Brand Equity into "Irrational Brand Loyalty"
• An innovative approach to gain sales confidence and process