The Scale Up Show

Grab you Free Copy of “The 4 Biggest Mistakes That Stop Companies From 10X’ing Their Revenue”  at https://www.scalerevenue.io/10x

Not all entrepreneurs are extroverts. In fact, many entrepreneurs self identify as introverts and on top of that will claim to have some social anxiety both in business and personal situations.

Mark Metry suffered from social anxiety for many years, without even realizing what it was. Mark had thought he was introverted for much of his life, never realizing that he was actually suffering from social anxiety.

Mark even got to the point of being depressed and suicidal. At one pivotal point in Mark’s journey, he began processing his feelings. One revelation he had that helped heal him was realizing that he was trapped in his head. 

The start of overcoming his anxiety was the realization that he was not his thoughts. This sent him delving into the neuroscience behind thoughts and what makes them subconscious vs. conscious thoughts.

Understanding this difference helped Mark begin reversing out of his depression and suicidal thoughts. 

Mark uses the cognitive bias codex to help understand how to hack his brain function. Our brain has effects and illusions that help create our reality. The spotlight effect is one of these illusions that heavily impacts people with social anxiety.

The brain is the hardware that houses the mind. If the brain is the hardware, the mind is the software. Both have to be in sync in order for you to have good mental health.

How to shift your belief system that your brain holds:

Rebuild the foundation of your brain from the ground up. 

Go in layer by layer and rebuild your house.

It’s a combination of science - the gut microbiome has a lot to do with it. We have multiple layers of consciousness from bacteria in the gut microbiome. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that is designed to figure out where you fit in society - your status. It goes off partial information, so it may be partly right and partly wrong.

90% of the serotonin neurotransmitter is processed in the gut microbiome, based on the food you eat and the stress levels you have.

“The 2nd Brain” is the name of the gut microbiome.

Your brain creates algorithms and stores them in the brain. 

When you are stuck in anxiety, you have to get your brain out of the cycle.

Join us for Part 2 of this interview to get the tactical steps for overcoming anxiety.

Need help scaling your revenue? Ryan can help. Apply to work with him at https://scalerevenue.io/apply

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

Grab you Free Copy of “The 4 Biggest Mistakes That Stop Companies From 10X’ing Their Revenue”  at https://www.scalerevenue.io/10x

If you’ve worked really hard to build deep and intimate relationships with a client and invested a ton of time and effort along the way, when it comes time to sign a deal, you want it to be with you!

It’s disappointing and completely deflating when you lose the deal after investing so much in the relationship.

Today, I’m sharing 3 frameworks to go from having million dollar years, to closing million dollar deals.

In today’s market, the skills that I am going to share with you today are going to be more critical than ever.

When moving from selling transactional deals to recurring revenue of tens of thousands for dollars, you have to make a shift.

What you have to remember is that when the type of sale shifts to MRR from transactions, the number of people involved changes.

It’s no longer just your contact making the decisions, so you now have a tribe of people responsible for the decision.

The tribe overrides the relationship.

If there is no relationship with the tribe, they look to logic to make a decision.

If there is no logic, then likely a decision doesn’t get made and nothing changes.

Sometimes doing nothing is more advantageous for their careers than making a wrong decision that ends up backfiring.

1. Understand the top 3 biggest problems in their department.
2. What are the most important projects behind those problems?
3. Focus on those 3 biggest problems.

Now look at those problems through this lens:

What’s their biggest problem growing revenue? - topline expense

What’s their biggest problem reducing expenses? - bottom line expense

What’s their biggest problem reducing customer churn? 

Align your solution to help all 3 areas. 

If you put every solution as a direct impact to those 3 main focus areas, and back it with the logic of solving their 3 biggest problems while bringing in focus the 3 outcomes the company wants anyway. Then the solution will become a no-brainer.

Your job to be successful is to close all the doors except for one. So this will allow you to only pursue opportunities that will close.

Don’t overvalue the relationship. Focus your solutions through the lens of growing revenue, reducing expenses and customer churn.

Need help scaling your revenue? Ryan can help you. Apply to work with him at https://scalerevenue.io/apply

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

Grab you Free Copy of “The 4 Biggest Mistakes That Stop Companies From 10X’ing Their Revenue”  at https://www.scalerevenue.io/10x

Brad Seaman is the CEO of MonsterConnect, a company that focuses on helping outbound sales reps be more productive. He also created a call center technology company.

Brad loves the complexity of B2B business solutions and the convergence of AI in the space.

The difference between inbound and outbound sales

Outbound - it’s a proactive outreach and you have to qualify the leads to make sure they can buy and that they are a good fit. Could be phone, email, linkedin outreach to pre identified targets.

Inbound - people may be ready to buy but they aren’t always a good fit.

Ultimately, sales comes down to:

• Quality
• Quantity
• Speed

If you don’t have your brand established, inbound sales is a long game.

If you are not getting the results you want, you probably aren’t doing the work. Many times your revenue goes up when you are prospecting (whether you close the deals or not) and when you stop prospecting, your revenue goes down. Action creates results.

Characteristics of Outbound Sales:

1. It’s a metric you can control.
2. It’s a proactive action you can take.
3. Sales cycle is longer.
4. More profitable sales.
5. The sale is not as competitive.

It’s not an inbound vs. outbound scenario - you need to be doing all of the activities needed to get a sale.

Brad believes that if you do the work and take the actions, you will get the results. 

A secret hack for outbound prospecting:

If you read job posts, many times you can glean data that can tell you the direction they will be taking in the next few quarters.

The best intent data is job postings. Brad says to read the job posting backwards and you can glean a ton of data.

In looking at job descriptions, you can also identify which companies are pro outbound sales. You can also identify the pain points that company is having and may be looking for solutions for.

As a sales person, they can be your best data source. They allow you to be a storm chaser instead of an insurance salesman.

Most companies don’t really understand why people buy from them in the B2B scenario.

ZoomInfo is a good tool to develop a data set. Having a team dedicated to identifying targets and creating the data around those targets can be a great resource for sales reps.

The best outbound process is one that you actually do.

Resources:

Brad Seaman on Monsteconnect.com

Brad Seaman on LinkedIn

If you need help scaling your sales, Ryan can help you. To apply to work with Ryan, go to scalerevenue.io/apply.

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

Grab your Free Copy of “The 4 Biggest Mistakes That Stop Companies From 10X’ing Their Revenue” at https://www.scalerevenue.io/10x

There’s only one thing that sucks worse than losing a deal to a competitor…

That’s losing a deal to no decision being made!

It happens all the time and it’s like the ghost that comes out of nowhere and kills all your whales!

Today, I’m showing you the simple 3 step framework to keep this from happening to you.

When you are dealing with whale prospects, you utilize massive amounts of:

• Time
• Energy
• Resources
• Emotion

So, if you get nothing from those deals, it can take a lot longer to recover.

Whale deals are not for the faint of heart!

I’ve learned this lesson the hard way - from working my way through about 1000 whale deals, and I don’t want you to have the same learning curve that I did.

When you are dealing with whale prospects, it all boils down to this...

3 Questions of the Career:

1. What are their Career Priorities?
2. What are their KPI’s?
3. What is their Career Vision?

Timing is one of the most important things you are dealing with in whale prospects.

The average time a person spends in a C-Suite role is 16 months. So, if you let a deal drag on for too long, you’ll have to start all over with the next executive.

To keep a deal from going cold, find out:

1. What is the most important thing in their career right now? (What is important to them)
2. For your role, what is success and how is it measured? (How are they evaluated?)
3. What is your vision for your job and your career? (Where do they want to go and what’s the outcome they need to get there?)

When you structure a deal to help the client hit their KPI’s, the deal will get done almost instantly because of the massive incentive it provides.

When you can help your point of contact position the solution you are providing as a win to Sr. Management, then you play a role in getting your contact to achieve their goals, while the company meets theirs, and you win the deal - no matter how you chop it up, those are wins all around!

Results:

1. You get bigger deals
2. Your deals will close much faster

Need help scaling your revenue? Ryan works with companies one on one to make this happen. You can apply to work with him at:

scalerevenue.io/apply

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

Are you ready for a Challenge?  Join me LIVE with other CEO’s, Founders and Revenue Leaders from July 26th-30th at the Referrals for Revenue Challenge: https://www.referralsforrevenuechallenge.com/go

Today, I’m sharing with you something that I learned strictly by taking action. This wasn’t a situation where I was pondering or researching to try and find answers to my problems, but this take away happened because I was taking action.

What I am talking about is creating strategic byproducts. Now, when this happened to me, I didn’t actually get the results I was looking for. I actually made quantum leaps in my business in a fraction of the time.

A strategic byproduct is a term used by Dan Sullivan and he defines it as an unintended byproduct of taking actions on another front.

My strategic byproduct happened as a result of me wanting to serve the market in a different way. I shifted my business model and had to stop doing what was working in order to serve people at a higher level.

In the book, Quantum Leap by Price Pritchett, he lists out some common traps that can inhibit our growth:

“The more of the same trap” - reliance on trying harder rather than trying differently.

• The Faith in the Familiar Trap - relying on your usual routines for success.
• The What isn’t Seen Isn’t There Trap
• The You Have To Do It All By Yourself Trap
• The Playing It Safe Trap
• The Choosing the Wrong Risk Trap
• The passivity Trap - wishing for what you want instead of pursuing what you want
• The Failures Aren’t Allowed Trap - the unwillingness to make mistakes, interpreting problems as proof that you should give up and quit, ,
• The Perfect Timing Trap - waiting for the right circumstances

4 Strategic Byproducts that came out of my business shift:

1. Created 2 new partnerships from being on Clubhouse for an hour.
2. My messaging wasn’t hitting the market right - closed the gap between my message and the results I was getting.
3. Learned more about my market in a week than in the previous year.
4. I am not afraid to test anymore.

Failure findings = leveraged learning.

I can try 10 new things and 9 of them won’t work, but one of them will. So, I will double down on the one thing that works and then find 9 new ways to try something. Then rinse and repeat!

The Quantum Leap Strategy by Price Pritchett

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

Are you ready for a Challenge?  Join me LIVE with other CEO’s, Founders and Revenue Leaders from July 26th-30th at the Referrals for Revenue Challenge: https://www.referralsforrevenuechallenge.com/go

I am continually fascinated by looking at what billion dollar companies are doing to achieve success. 

When you reach that status, it’s probably pretty certain that they’ve had their share of failures before they achieved that success.

So, anything I can do to shortcut or hack my way to success on the back of their success, then I’m all in.

Today, I’m sharing one of the most counterintuitive hacks I’ve ever seen, and I found it by looking at Hubspot!

Hubspot is probably the #2 Sales CRM, and they are only eclipsed by Salesforce. They recently crossed the $1B ARR mark.

Their traffic sources are:

1. Content - 6-7%
2. Google - 24%
3. Word of Mouth - 30%

Logic creates decisions.

Emotions create action.

You create emotions by your messaging and your relationship with them.

I see companies that:

1. Have an amazing product
2. Have a 90% retention rate.
3. Don’t talk to their customers after selling them a solution.

If you develop a deep relationship with your customers, not just in the initial sales phase, but all the way through the customer lifecycle, then you will get the WOM effect.

The impacts of having these well developed relationships with your customers is:

1. It will reduce your churn rate.
2. It will increase your net promoter score.
3. You will begin to get inbound leads.

Companies will spend more.

The sales cycles will be faster.

Your margins will be higher because they have a relationship with you.

These are the 3 questions of the relationship:

1. Relationships to people - who are the most important people in their lives and why? (who and why)
2. Relationships with passions. (What do you like to spend time on outside of work?)
3. Relationships to the person. (Why do you like that the most?)

Leveraging these 3 questions will allow you to develop much deeper relationships with your clients than anyone else.

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

Are you ready for a Challenge?  Join me LIVE with other CEO’s, Founders and Revenue Leaders from July 26th-30th at the Referrals for Revenue Challenge: https://www.referralsforrevenuechallenge.com/go

The reality is that buying behavior is changing and we need to be aware of these trends so we can adapt and change so our numbers don’t stagnate.

I read some really interesting data the other day and I wanted to make you aware of the data. It’s from a Forester 2021 buying study with over 1000 respondents.

Looking at things from the buying process will help you get more sales.

How are buying habits changing?

1. Buyers now means a buying group. 63% of companies now have 6 or more people involved in the buying process. 
2. It’s a more complex buying process. The number of buying interactions jumped by 10, going from 17-27. Trust is a huge factor. 
3. Buyers go everywhere for information. Self directed research is king. More options = less clarity.

These 3 important areas of buyer considerations that you need to keep in mind if you want to be in the top 1% in sales.

If you want to be a leader in your space, you have to become a student of the game.

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

Are you ready for a Challenge?  Join me LIVE with other CEO’s, Founders and Revenue Leaders from August 2nd-6th at the Referrals for Revenue Challenge: https://www.referralsforrevenuechallenge.com/go

In looking at how many software companies are growing their base, I am finding that some of the more successful ones are really investing in referrals. Now, you know I love referrals as an easy way to grow revenue, so I thought it was worth diving into a bit more.

There are 3 ways to increase your WOM Metrics:

1. Measure
2. Mandate
3. Magnify

Measure:

A lot of companies don’t track what percentage of customers comes from word of mouth.

This is a key metric.

HubSpot is a ninja in marketing and content marketing and 33% of their revenue comes from word of mouth referrals.

Mandate:

It has to be a mandatory work flow to ask “Where did you hear about us?”. 

Ask at multiple points in the sales cycle - sales reps need to be asking and it needs to be built in the automation.

Magnify:

If you focus on it, it grows.

If you set a goal for the metric, it grows.

Bill.com just had an IPO and saw 50% of customers come from other customers.

If your percentage of WOM grows over time, that’s a good sign.

This is how I grew my business, starting from zero, with no marketing department or anything.

Accelerate It By:

1. Getting your customer the outcome they need with the solution you provide.
2. What is your mini-brand (niche)? Focus on that before you start expanding.
3. Systemize the referral process.
4. Don’t get distracted. Stay focused on where you have synergy.
5. Share social wins.

I’m such a fan of referrals because:

Referrals are the cheapest traffic you can get.

They cut the sales cycle in half.

They are 120-150% more profitable. 

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

Are you ready for a Challenge? Join me LIVE with other CEO’s, Founders, and Revenue Leaders from August 2nd-6th at the Referrals for Revenue Challenge: https://www.referralsforrevenuechallenge.com/go

Have you ever learned something in your career the hard way? Often, we only realize the value of lessons much later when we have gained a lot more experience. Today’s guest, Sam Jacobs, learned about humility only after quitting his job in investment banking to start a record label that failed abysmally. He also learned some vital lessons after getting fired multiple times from several different companies over the last decade. 

Sam has had a huge diversity of experiences. He is the Founder and CEO of Pavilion, the premier community and premier development platform for high-growth leaders and their teams at every function.

After grinding for a long time, Sam started Revenue Collective as a group therapy session and community for his friends and peers so that they could support each other, help one another find jobs, and get better at their jobs. He started the community as a group in New York. They got together every quarter to talk about their problems and challenges over some drinks or a meal. People from all over the world started hearing about it. They began reaching out to Sam to start new chapters. So they got some other chapter heads in London, Toronto, Boston, and Amsterdam, and they also added Indianapolis, Denver, and Atlanta. 

Revenue Collective started charging dues at the start of 2018. Sam was still working then, so it was a side-hustle for him. After getting fired from his job a few months later, he decided to do it full-time. He figured that if he got 2000 paying members, he could survive in New York. 

It was a huge success, and they rebranded to become Pavilion. The mission of the company is about helping each person get where they want to go in their life through their work. 

Pavilion was profitable, and Sam was not planning on raising any money. However, he got an email from Elephant Ventures, offering him $25,000,000. So he took the money and used it to build his company to where it is today.  

Getting fired sucks for many reasons, regardless of how much you get paid for severance. Despite making a lot of money at Gerson Lehrman Group, Sam was not happy there. He went through a divorce at the same time as he got fired from GLG, so he lost a lot of money, and his income also dropped drastically. That was the start of a radical transformation for Sam.

Sam went to work for Axial in their very early stage. After getting fired, he went to Livestream. He left there to join TheMuse.Com as their CRO and, after seven months, was asked to leave. They felt he was not a good fit for their culture because he was too hard. He then moved onto Behavox but got asked to leave because he was too lenient. 

Getting fired at the executive level is not quite as crazy as getting fired as an account executive. At the executive level, you get fired as an individual contributor because you did not hit your number. If you get fired as a C-Suite executive, however, it is probably because your vision does not align with what the CEO wants to do, and ultimately, you are in service of the CEO’s vision.

Although he is introverted, Sam loves to help people. Since starting Revenue Collective in 2016, Sam has been sincerely looking for ways to help his friends and the broader community. 

Sam loves hearing about people who work hard, want to be better, do things the right way, and succeed. He recently did a workshop for their Rising Executives Program and realized that 5 of those who joined their January class have already been promoted to VP.

Getting fired from The Muse was a turning point in Sam’s life. That was when he decided to stop relying on other people and start charging dues for Revenue Collective. He also decided to try for sponsorship, so he asked Kevin O’Malley of SalesLoft for $10,000 to put together a dinner for him in New York each quarter. Kevin agreed, and Sam started charging dues of $50 per month. 19 of the 21 members paid their dues. Sam kept on moving forward, and more people wanted to join his collective.

To build a successful company, you need to find a technical person to build a product. Unfortunately, finding engineers is the hardest part of building a company because most engineers want to work for other smart engineers. That is why you need to have a product-driven founder. 

Before, Sam never gave himself the right to believe that his community could get big and never allowed himself to dream. 

Covid was an inflection point because everything became digital, and many networking businesses failed to adapt and went out of business. They adapted very quickly, however, and grew 5x during Covid.

Over the past few months, Sam finally let himself believe that the thing he was doing could be huge. 

A paid membership model is a more elegant way to do things because it forces people to commit, and they can be your customer. 

Sam built Pavilion, which is worth $100,000,000, using other people’s tools. That makes him wonder if we could be moving to a world where engineering talent is no longer the prerequisite that it used to be to build a valuable company. 

Quantifying his values and writing down what he believed internally for his company (then Revenue Collective) was extremely powerful for Sam. In 2018, he decided that if his company grew to 1000 people, he would stay close to the reasons he started in the first place, keep on checking in with those values, and be as helpful and useful to the membership as possible.

You don’t need to be a genius with B2B. You only need to listen to your customers. They will tell you what they want, so keep your mouth shut and listen. 

One of Pavilion’s values is: Listen closely. Act quickly.

All Sam thinks about is what people need.

During Covid, Sam decided to start an exclusive community that people could only join if they were out of work. It was to help people find jobs and provide group therapy for those who could not. He called it On the Bench, and there are currently 200 people in the program. Sam had no master plan. He just tried to do the next right thing.

There are 3 jobs for the CEO:

1. Never run out of money
2. Recruit or build a team
3. Set the vision

You need to delegate effectively. Sam is lazy, which is good because he delegates.

Delegating helps you scale. If you set clear direction and clear values, you can grow.

Telling people to go and figure things out is good for creating their self-reliance. It can also be difficult because sometimes it is better to have someone else help you figure things out.

The top sales and marketing levers that Sam pulled to get the growth he did from a bootstrap perspective for Revenue Collective were:

1. He created brand affinity by explicitly encouraging people to put Revenue Collective on their LinkedIn profiles. Initially, 50% of the community did it. Now, 82% of the community does it.
2. He created a multi-level marketing component to Revenue Collective because he shares the money from the dues with people for the work they do for the platform. Some of the members tied their brands to Revenue Collective because they benefited personally from a financial incentive for doing that.
3. He does unscalable things that lead to scale, like coaching calls, to show customers that he cares. Sam feels that people are overly obsessed with ‘scale’ on the margin.

Venture capital is good if you have a strong product-market fit and a strong go-to-market fit. The limiting factor in your growth is just money, so if you have something that lots of people love, get it into as many hands as possible, and cement your competitive advantage, venture capital can be very powerful.  

Venture capital is a bad thing if you misdefine what you perceive to be your exceptionalism, and as a consequence, you take on a lot of money, obligation, and an expectation of growth that you are not ready to deliver on.

It could take 18 months to 2 years to work yourself into a position to raise money.

Sam cares about a different way of doing business and teaching people that you can split the difference and leave some money on the table. It is okay to do something for someone without asking for anything in return, even if some people take advantage of your generosity. It will all come back to you eventually for what you want to achieve in your life, including making money.

There is a different way to live. It is about helping before asking for help, looking to offer advice, and not treating relationships transactionally.

Links and resources:

Sam Jacobs on LinkedIn

Join Pavilion

Email Sam Jacobs: [email protected]

Need help scaling your revenue? Apply to work with Ryan at https://scalerevenue.io/apply

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

Are you ready for a Challenge?  Join me LIVE with other CEO’s, Founders and Revenue Leaders from July 26th-30th at the Referrals for Revenue Challenge: https://www.referralsforrevenuechallenge.com/go

Right now, there are some really big companies that have tapped into a way to bring in a tsunami of new customers to their business. 

Success leaves clues, and it’s important to look at what they are doing and what you can use for your business.

I was listening to Tony Robbins speak at a business conference. He asked the crowd of 5000 business owners an important question.

“How many of you have a referral system that you track KPI’s on? Please stand.”

350 people stood up.

He then went further, asking those who were already standing...

“How many of you have 2 or more referral systems that you track KPI’s on? Remain standing.”

Only about 150 remained standing.

Out of 5000 business owners, only 150 had multiple ways to get referrals and track results. That’s just 3% of businesses.

This is the single best way to grow and double your business.

So why are so few businesses using it?

I looked at about 9 different businesses and at every revenue level, and none of them had a referral system in place.

This was proving to be a pattern, and I don’t understand why businesses aren’t using this method.

Referrals are a no-brainer because:

1. Referrals have half the sales cycle length 
2. 125-150% more profitable than a normal deal because they are from a trusted source.
3. 84% of buyers are kicking off their sales cycle with a referral
4. 83% of customers are happy to provide a referral after the sale, but only 29% of sales reps are asking for referrals.

Why companies fail when trying to grow through referrals:

1. They don’t know the profit pathways - you want to stack the pathways.
2. They don’t have a process that is easy to collect referrals - need a super simple model. Behavior = prompt + motivation + ability.
3. They don’t prepare properly. They ask general vs. specific questions, so the referrals they do get are not their ideal clients.
4. They don’t know their prospect’s peaks. What are the avalanche points in the buyer’s journey. Emotion creates action. This makes most companies ask for referrals at the wrong time. Ask when they are happiest.
5. They don’t leverage persuasion properly. You have to “pre-suade” to persuade. Tap into the monkey mind. If you give someone something of value, they feel the need to repay the debt. This is hard wired into human survival.

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