The Scale Up Show

Patrick is the founder and ceo of Profitwell, who recently sold resulting in a joint venture with the company Paddle.

Profitwell offer a suite of tools that plug directly into subscription management systems, optimising pricing strategies, revenue recognition and more!

Patrick talks to Ryan all about the pricing strategies he has used to increase revenue as well as his unique 3-step go to market strategy. He also talks about the tactics he has used to grow Profitwell including giving away free subscription financial metrics to over 30,000 companies!

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• There are only around 150,000 subscription and Saas companies and Profitwell used this small market to their advantage by brand building and content marketing.
• When your pool of potential clients is small then you have to market to reflect this, generally focusing on high lifetime value and high retention.
• Automation is the future for Saas b2b product. Clients want a simple plug-in software to do the work for them so they can focus on their customers, product and higher value tasks.
• In all businesses there are resilient stages and endurance stages. If you can recognise which one you are in you can then choose the right ways to deal with your challenges.
• The way Profitwell ran their BDR was unique in the industry. They decided to run all messaging through their growth team, rather than relying on inexperienced sales reps. They also built-in unique content to their core marketing strategy, including video and podcasts.
• 80% of Profitwells dollars come from inbound, this meant it took them time to work on their referral programme because they didn’t need to rely on it, something Patrick recognises as a missed opportunity.
• When developing their middle funnel marketing, Profitwell ensured they focused either on personas they were targeting, or they targeted the ‘need’ or ‘pain point’.
• The way to think about pricing is to concentrate on anything that improves your revenue per customer, for this there are a large amount of levers, including the obvious price increases but also things like add-on strategies and value metrics.

 

 

BEST MOMENTS

 “When you have a small pool your go to market has to reflect that”

“We automate your retention and the tactical side of the retention…we’re the best in the world at recovering failed payments, we’re the best in the world at cancellation flows, a bunch of these things”

“We just reinvested every dollar we made back into the business and grew from there”

“Discount doesn’t really move the needle until it’s a massive discount”

Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?"  Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

 

Ryan Staley

Founder and CEO

Whale Boss

312-848-7443

[email protected]

www.ryanstaley.io 

 

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickccampbell

https://www.profitwell.com/test-tear-down-install/author/patrick-campbell

 

ABOUT THE SHOW

How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.

This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.

Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

Mark Stouse is the CEO and founder of Proof Analytics. He joins Ryan in this episode to focus on the customer-focused innovative pricing solution he and Proof Analytics created to cut their sales cycle, from 6-9 months to just 2 weeks! Mark also talks about the importance of taking your time with the hiring process, why Proof Analytics are renowned for mixed marketing and the evolution of the SAAS market.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Proof Analytics is one of the world best and fastest automated revenue marketing and optimisation platform.
• Customers are generally having substantial trust issues with saas companies, so are moving away from annual contracts and looking at more shorter-term, flexible solutions.
• Proof Analytics allow customers to pay just $45 a month, this has resulted in them shortening their sales closing time from 6-9 months to just 2 weeks!
• Being one of the first to automate market-mix modelling, has allowed proof Analytics to really dominate the space.
• Hiring the right people is imperative to create a great company. Mark and Proof Analytics focus on getting the right people with the right values and don’t compromise. They want to ensure the team are fully aligned with their values and act in accordance with these.
• You should hire slowly and take the time to get the right people. You can then fire quickly if needed, if they aren’t right for the role, particularly in a start-up, then cut your losses.
• The brand work alongside the lower cost base of a monthly subscription has allowed Proof Analytics to grow substantially.

 

BEST MOMENTS

 “Customers are moving away from annual contracts”

“We’re renowned in the area of market-mix modelling”

“The natural human tendency is to be expedient”

“You have to hire slow and terminate quickly”

 

Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?"  Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

 

Ryan Staley

Founder and CEO

Whale Boss

312-848-7443

[email protected]

www.ryanstaley.io 

 

EPISODE RESOURCES

www.proofanalytics.ai

 

ABOUT THE SHOW

How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.

This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.

Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

CEO and founder of Postie Dave Fink joins Ryan in this episode. Postie is a software company that integrates direct mail with digital marketing to create powerful campaigns. They are a self-proclaimed ‘sneaky big company’ and have 3x their revenue year upon year upon year!

Dave talks all about this success, how Postie was built and hypothesises that sales tactics and marketing hacks aren’t enough to build a long-lasting successful company, that simply put, a great product and service builds success. He also discusses why direct mail is one of the best kept secrets in marketing and utilising this with his team’s wealth of tech and marketing experience led them to where they are today.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Through Posties own growth and profit they have been able to behave like a late series B company.
• Up to a year and a half ago Postie spent $0 in marketing! They relied on a very talented sales team and reputation.
• More recently, marketing and good storytelling began to back up Dave and his company’s hypothesis that they weren’t just a good sales company, they now use a variety of marketing tactics, including content marketing, which has transformed them into a marketing-led organisation.
• Postie was built on the foundations of direct mail. Direct mail is an incredibly scaleable channel that is data rich but what it often lacks is speed and optimisation. So, Dave and his team built the technology to make DM dynamic!
• Originally bootstrapped, Postie sourced funding in 2017 but they have built and grown to a late series b company without needing another round of funding since.
• Postie recognise themselves as unique in the market, they are a channel management solution focused on software, workflow and support but with better targeting, simpler execution and better measurement.
• Long hours, hard work and lots of trial and error created Postie success. They simply built a great product that solved a pain point that enough of the market had and then worked on it, providing great service along the way.

 

BEST MOMENTS

 “We’re performance driven, we’re quant[ative] minded, we want control over the optimisation of our media spend”

“Let’s build ad-serving tech to empower marketers that expect a lot”

“If we did not have a great product market fit, the ability to deliver on what we were selling I don’t think any sales tactic would work”

 

Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?"  Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

 

Ryan Staley

Founder and CEO

Whale Boss

312-848-7443

[email protected]

www.ryanstaley.io 

 

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://postie.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidlfink

 

ABOUT THE SHOW

How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.

This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.

Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

Shaunak Roy joins Ryan in this episode. Shaunak is the CEO and founder of Yellowdig, an active learning platform adopted by hundreds of colleges and universities. Yellowdig have a unique approach to sales and revenue, they use what they call the B2B to C Model, with a majority inbound sales method and work alongside the distinctive traits of the education space to grow and scale.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Yellowdig creates connected learning environments, regardless of where students/teachers are located. It creates a unique user experience that doesn’t exist online or a physical classroom either.
• Shaunak had always known he wanted to start his own company, he also knew that if he did create a company he wanted it to be scalable. This is why he wanted to create  problem-solving technology.
• Shaunak started to learn everything he could about building a product, business models and the education space. It was a tremendous learning experience for him as he started to build Yellowdig.
• Yellowdig’s first product wasn’t a success but the schools loved the concept, so they went back to the drawing board to make it better.
• Yellowdig are a B2B to C company. This means that they go directly to the user of their technology and give them a pilot. If they then like this, they then use them to champion the school/administrator to buy the product.
• The majority of Yellowdig’s leads are inbound, via faculty members referring and user webinars.
• As the education sector trust largely on referrals, Yellowdig are careful not to be to ‘salesy’ towards them. This is a group that doesn’t like to feel like they are being sold to.
• Gathering useful feedback from users is essential to Yellowdig’s progress. Education is a very impact driven space to they want to ensure they can give all the facts and measures to their clients.

 

BEST MOMENTS

 “I’ve always wanted to start a company which is why I did”

“The B2C to C is essentially an extension of B2B”

“Raising money is a big question, especially for saas companies”

"It's a change in mindset, a lot of institutions are old school so you have to be patient with them"

 

Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?"  Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

 

Ryan Staley

Founder and CEO

Whale Boss

312-848-7443

[email protected]

www.ryanstaley.io 

 

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaunak-roy-65231b

https://www.yellowdig.co/profile/88adc34e-9c40-41eb-9adc-5f06046ad8e8/profile

 

ABOUT THE SHOW

How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.

This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.

Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

Julie Brinkman, CEO at Beyond Pricing, joins Ryan in this episode to talk all about her passion for business growth and the unique strategies and capital principles she has applied to different markets across the years. She has gained a wealth of experience including a role as CEO in a HR start-up and holding senior positions in global company Groupon.

Most recently she has taken Beyond Pricing from a struggling position at the peak of covid and led them to 100% YOY growth. Join Ryan and Julie in this episode for some great takeaways on capital growth and business strategy.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Beyond Pricing gives short-term rental managers and owners the tools to grow revenue.
• The world of short-term rentals have changed during and since the pandemic. It’s had to cope with these fast changes but Julie and her team have managed to stay ahead.
• Beyond Pricing has two distinct growth functions, product-led growth strategy and a traditional direct-sales model, depending on the client they are trying to attain.
• Beyond Pricing have to manage their products for vastly different spectrums of the short-term rental market, from one of the biggest property managers in the US to individuals who just have one singular property. They have to tailor their products for each of their individual client’s needs.
• Julie spent 10 years at financial advisory firm DeloItte, she then decided she needed to work somewhere more dynamic and applied for a role at Groupon. This is where she learnt about how to manage a great sales team but also gained the passion for business growth and strategy.
• Julie wanted to see what she could do at a smaller business, which is when she made the decision moved to a role at the HR start-up Hirerology, before moving onto her role now at Beyond Pricing.
• Blue sky thinking is something Julie believes in and attributes it to a lot of success she has found in business, including at start-ups, because of the belief that anything is possible.
• Beyond Pricing are not a traditional subscription model business, clients subscribe to them and then they take a percentage of sales. This means they grow with the market but are also incentivised in the same way as their clients.
• During the pandemic, Julie and her team focused on retention and strategies that would help their clients through this difficult time. They kept their customers in mind in every decision they made.

 

 

BEST MOMENTS

 “We acquired them through a product-led growth strategy”

“There are a lot of parallels between saas and running your own short-term rental business”

“I got really addicted to growing a business, setting strategies and hitting goals”

“I let my results speak for themselves”

“I don’t think you can run start-ups unless you think anything is possible”

“Those companies that deliver real value to customers in a real way will survive”

Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?"  Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

 

Ryan Staley

Founder and CEO

Whale Boss

312-848-7443

[email protected]

www.ryanstaley.io 

 

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://www.beyondpricing.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jrbrinkman

 

ABOUT THE SHOW

How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.

This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.

Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

Miro is a former software engineer turned tech-founder based in Bulgaria and is the co-founder and CEO of OfficeRnD, a leading software company specialising in products to help people to work flexibly. Miro runs a 100% inbound company and in this episode he shares exactly how he achieved this. If you are wanting to grow and/or looking at lead generation then this is the episode for you!

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• OfficeRnD is a global company with offices in Bulgaria, Australia and the UK.
• One of OfficeRnD’s core products is flex, which solves most of the issues with co-working spaces by focusing on member experience.
• Another one of their products allows companies to be more flexible in their workplace strategies, enabling them and their staff to use their offices in a more flexible way.
• OfficeRnD went through an accelerator programme which both Miro and his partner found incredibly helpful. It gave them motivation and aided them in finding the right problems to try and solve.
• It was essential that Miro and his partner researched and spoke to customers before developing their software, they needed to ensure they were trying to solve a problem that existed.
• At the beginning, OfficeRnD focused on content marketing, using blog posts to gain customers. Alongside this they also answered and gave information to users on Reddit and Quora. This is how they began their 100% inbound business.
• OfficeRnD furthered their inbound rate by focusing on seo, including building high quality content around ‘quick win’ keywords and getting on other blog lists and recommendations.
• The next step is for Miro and his team is to systemise their referral programme and put in a solid framework, they believe in the strength of word of mouth, especially in their niche and small market.
• Miro’s advice for those looking to create a second product is to give it as much autonomy as you can, so it can truly grow and meet its potential.

 

BEST MOMENTS

 “Our software helps teams synchronise their schedules and arrive in the office on days they want to or need to”

“Engineers usually develop solutions for problems that many times they just don’t exist”

“If you’re a first time founder…the high quality accelerators [programmes] can be extremely beneficial”

“I love word of mouth, it’s a small market, a niche market that we are in we try and do everything we can to make our customers happy”

Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?"  Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

 

Ryan Staley

Founder and CEO

Whale Boss

312-848-7443

[email protected]

www.ryanstaley.io 

 

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://www.officernd.com/blog/author/miro/

ABOUT THE SHOW

How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.

This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.

Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

Ryan is joined by Jeff Bzdawka in this episode, a seasoned leader of tech and hospitality. Jeff is the CEO of Knowland, as well as the COO at Travel Click and also led tech for the global brand Hyatt. Join them for a conversation about customer service, the complexities of the hospitality industry and of course SaaS and Tech!

Jeff has always considered himself a hotel operator first and has put his passion for providing caring service at the forefront of everything he has done. He talks with Ryan about the importance of customer focus and how simply unlocking strategy can have a long-lasting impact of lifetime customer value; this is exactly what he has done at Knowland.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Knowland are in the hospitality space, specifically groups and events so the pandemic has had a huge impact.
• Jeff joined Knowland as CEO to help aid the company in its role as a critical hotel partner during the industry recovery of covid.
• Knowland is a saas based business, that focuses on the insights. It’s not only about the data for them but instead but what can be done with it to support their clients.
• A company’s foundation is built of people and product, and this is what Jeff attributes much of Knowlands success to. To recognise and sustain a strong product and stronger team.
• Bringing hospitality and tech together and using the tech to scale and enable change, create better experiences and drive results is what excites Jeff.
• Often integration of technology by saas companies into the hospitality industry isn’t the best it can be. This is something Jeff was and still is passionate to change.
• Knowlands product is well placed to scale globally, they understand the complexities of the industry and can see the opportunities.
• Jeff looked at the decision making processes and the PS wrapper, to get closer to clients and provide additional revenue by upselling.

 

BEST MOMENTS

 “Creating and taking that data in actionable insights, lead generations, helping hotels understand how they can sell better and to fill their hotels with more profitable business”

“Sales people selling to sales people can be a challenge”

“It’s a lot easier to sell to a happy customer than go out and find new [ones]”

Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?"  Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

 

Ryan Staley

Founder and CEO

Whale Boss

312-848-7443

[email protected]

www.ryanstaley.io 

 

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffbzdawka

 

ABOUT THE SHOW

How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.

This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.

Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

Ryan is joined by Matt Young in this episode. Matt was born an engineer and now runs UserVoice, a product feedback software that helps companies make data driven decisions and prioritise future requests to help their growth

Matt and Ryan talk about growth strategy, the power of learning from your clients and what it means for a software companies’ success when they truly back their engineers.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

•  UserVoice help answer the age-old problem of product market fit.
• UserVoice gets a lot of inbound requests from companies, they are often searched for when a company is struggling and follow a content-marketing strategy to aid this.
• When a customer talks to UserVoice about their unique problems, they start with the outcome and work backwards.
• Being a multi-product company was needed for UserVoice to grow and Matt Young headed this.
• The way people want to talk to the companies that provide their software services has changed, they want to know more detail and more data. There’s a lot more information that you have to be clever about learning.
• UserVoice offer help beyond the software, this is something that attracts more people towards them.
• Having the ability to work with lots of different product companies means that UserVoice can have visibility what works and what doesn’t.
• The companies that do the best are the ones that measure twice and cut once.
• When starting product research, it’s important to be crystal clear about what you want and expect to learn.
• Facilitate meetings between your marketing and product teams. The information and ideas they gather can be useful to both teams to share.
• Listening to your customers is about using the information they give you to go away and create the best product. It doesn’t always mean doing exactly what they say but about –understanding and facilitating their needs.

 

BEST MOMENTS

 “We try to share as much as possible to become thought leaders and industry experts”

“This is a way to put quantitative and qualitive data behind what an engineering team has asked to build”

“People who see us and say I really wish our company had that”

“Do you know that if you went to build a solution in mind that it would sell?”

 

Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?"  Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

 

Ryan Staley

Founder and CEO

Whale Boss

312-848-7443

[email protected]

www.ryanstaley.io 

 Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattcyoung

 

ABOUT THE SHOW

How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.

This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.

Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

Jordi Torras is the co-founder and CEO of Inbenta. Inbenta started off in the professional services space before making the jump to saas and have doubled in size every year since! They are a multi-award-winning company and have many big brands on their books.

Jordi talks with Ryan all about his innovative AI solution for digital companies, the power of natural language processing as well as the challenges he and the AI industry face.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Inbenta are essentially a b2b company. Their ideal customer is a b2c that produce digital products and have big operating call centres.
  
  
• If you are able to answer a customer’s question without them calling a call centre, then you get a faster resolution, a cheaper resolution and a happier customer too.
  
  
• After working for five years in search engines, Inbenta realised they had the potential to build new technology, an AI, that instead of using keywords would use meaning.
  
  
• In order for Inbentas products to work, they have to solve the problem manually before handing off to ai. This is something still commonly seen when building ai to solve complex problems.
  
  
• When selling these types of tools to companies, the companies usually have three questions: how certain is the outcome, how fast will they get results and how little hassle will it be for them to implement. You need to be prepared to answer them!
  
  
• If you build technology around your clients and potential client’s natural growth, then this allows for natural growth for you too.
  
  
• If you have a complex product, it can end up having a bad end-user journey. It’s essential you focus on this, especially as you grow and adapt.
  
  
• AI has had exponential growth in the past 5 years, many companies have sadly over promised. Resulting in customers having a bad experience with AI. Meaning that you have to try and re-energise and re-build faith in them in regard to AI products.
  
  
• Jordi believes technology is driving human progress and this will result in unique solutions to the world’s problems we face, including climate change.

 

BEST MOMENTS

 “We use a classic b2b sales process”

“We have this layered approach where we understand language”

“How can I make technology that is tied with the natural growth of the company?”

“We can save the climate change problem and we will”

 

Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?"  Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

 

Ryan Staley

Founder and CEO

Whale Boss

312-848-7443

[email protected]

www.ryanstaley.io 

 

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://www.inbenta.com/en/

ABOUT THE SHOW

How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.

This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.

Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

It’s the 200th episode of The Scale Up Show!

Founder and CEO of Rainforest QA Fred Stevens Smith joins Ryan today to talk all about how he grew his business past 8 figures, how he paid the ultimate price for a mistake and what it means to pivot and completely rebuild your business!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The first 7 years of the business was around a different product before realising that what had been designed wouldn’t be sustainable. Fred and his team had to completely change their strategy, which included firing 2/3 of their team and design a new product.
  
  
• You can’t get product market fit once you get hyper-growth. You become locked in. This is why Fred wanted to do something really radical.
  
  
• Although the product and go to market was essentially wrong, Fred and his team learnt a lot and believed they could build something that actually solved problems in the market sustainably; this is what drove them to pivot.
  
  
• Hyper growth can be a trap for some companies and Rainforest QA was almost one of them. Many companies get so focused on revenue that they aren’t working on their product enough and this is where disaster can strike.
  
  
• There’s a very big disconnect between model building and company building, it’s easy to misunderstand that when you are a first-time founder.
  
  
• Do not even think about raising funding against future revenue growth without first knowing you have product-market fit.
  
  
• Most ideas and most start-ups fail because they don’t get to great market fit. You can’t create market fit you can only uncover it. At the end of the day it boils down to net-revenue retention.
  
  
• QA is an ‘insanely broken industry’ according to Fred, which is why he was passionate about creating a solution that helped engineers.

 

BEST MOMENTS

 “I realised we were just going to be treading water here”

“They had insane hyper-market fit”

“You can’t really create great market fit you can just uncover it”

 

Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?"  Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

 

Ryan Staley

Founder and CEO

Whale Boss

312-848-7443

[email protected]

www.ryanstaley.io 

 

EPISODE RESOURCES

www.rainforestqa.com

 

ABOUT THE SHOW

How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.

This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.

Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets