Sean and Andrew stop by to chat about what happens when you build a client website live on a sales call 20 minutes into the presentation. We get into Andrew's cold outreach restart for MetaMonster, the report card angle they are testing with SEO agencies, and somehow end up debating whether Astro or Next.js is the right call for a SaaS marketing site.

Links:

• Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskins
• Andrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/
• MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/
• Slackletter: https://slackletter.com/
• Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsun
• Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/
• Margins: http://margins.so/
• Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/

For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.

Transcript:
00:01.20
Sean
What's up?

00:01.85
Andrew
Three, two, Oh, shit. Sorry. ah Awkward.

00:05.68
Sean
All good.

00:06.14
Andrew
Embarrassing.

00:07.26
Sean
All good. Jesus. ah

00:12.34
Andrew
Dude, every day that goes by without Metamonster closing a new customer, i just get more and more insecure about my abilities to be a SaaS founder.

00:25.30
Sean
Is that like...

00:27.14
Sean
Like every day, like you have a sales call and they don't buy right away or like, I see.

00:31.78
Andrew
I'm not even like having sales calls is the problem. Yeah, I we we do actually like you know, we've been working on the product when I when I started like breaking it down.

00:43.58
Sean
Yeah.

00:44.04
Andrew
I'm like, okay, it makes sense. um It's not like that shocking, but I'm still just like, ah like, is there demand for this thing? Are we wasting our time? What's going on?

00:55.96
Andrew
ah um but

01:00.21
Andrew
Like, so what we're doing right now, I do think the product has gotten a lot better.

01:06.46
Sean
Yeah.

01:06.55
Andrew
It still, like, has rough edges, but it is, like, it is way better than it used to be.

01:06.56
Sean
OK.

01:15.31
Andrew
um And um I think it's, like, in a sellable place now. What we're doing right now um is we're trying to spin up cold outreach again and start doing cold outreach.

01:33.04
Andrew
um And i think we've gotten clearer on our ICP. I think we've gotten clearer on like the problem we're trying to solve. um And so hopefully clearer on like the kind of signals we can look for to find good fit customers.

01:52.44
Andrew
um and so and'm like cautiously optimistic about this round of outreach that like and then jade's also almost officially on board so like i will have her to work with and to like help hold me accountable and i think we make a good team bouncing ideas off of each other and just like pushing building momentum together yeah um they

02:04.33
Sean
Nice.

02:13.65
Sean
Yeah, wait, didn't last time when we spoke, didn't Jade have like 25 demos lined up though or something like that?

02:23.19
Andrew
They haven't really been converting. um She's only done, i think she's done eight or so, and one may turn into a customer.

02:34.04
Andrew
um But she also hasn't really been pitching and because they're it's largely just like friends of hers, and so she didn't want to come in pitching too hard.

02:38.21
Sean
Yeah.

02:42.84
Andrew
It was more like more approaching them from a feedback standpoint.

02:43.16
Sean
Right, right. but Yeah, I meant like how is how's the feedback going?

02:49.49
Andrew
Feedback has been good, I think. i think But it's it's again, it's that like kind of mom test. it's the kind of It's a lot of feedback that kind of fails the mom test where it's like it's like people like the tool, but they're not adopting the tool.

03:01.93
Sean
Hmm.

03:07.44
Andrew
um And I think there's like a million reasons that can be. so like one of the one of the simple things that Jade's starting to do is um when people tell her like hey i'm interested in using this she's going to start scheduling a follow-up meeting to be like great why don't you use it for two weeks and then we'll talk again in two weeks and like create some accountability create a little bit of social pressure um and then in that second call i think we can more think she'll feel more comfortable asking for a sale

03:36.05
Sean
Right. Right.

03:44.02
Sean
Yeah, I mean, that makes sense.

03:45.17
Andrew
Yeah, because like at that point, they've shown interest.

03:45.69
Sean
Yeah.

03:47.29
Andrew
And it's like, OK, now it's time to ask for a sale.

03:47.81
Sean
Right.

03:50.23
Andrew
um

03:50.31
Sean
Right. Right. I mean, at that point, they've like actually, if they've actually used it and found it useful, and if they haven't, it's also useful to just know.

03:57.68
Andrew
Figure out why. Try to figure out why.

03:58.76
Sean
Yeah.

03:59.50
Andrew
Yeah.

04:00.44
Sean
Yeah,

04:00.47
Andrew
um And then we're trying to, like, it's like, OK, we also need to prove we can get demos outside of her network. And so let's...

04:12.30
Andrew
but scale up cold outreach, get that going again. We're doing it manually. When I say scale it up, I just mean, i basically just mean turn it on. I mean, start doing it.

04:22.26
Sean
yeah yeah

04:22.96
Andrew
um We're not like worried about scale. We're trying to do it very manually, very personably do it. My friend also challenged me to do not just like email or LinkedIn, but cold call people.

04:39.08
Sean
Oh, cool.

04:40.31
Andrew
Which, which is terrifying, which probably means I should try it.

04:45.20
Sean
ah Yeah. Yeah, 100%. I have a cold call video video to send you. like

04:49.72
Andrew
Okay. Send it to me.

04:50.52
Sean
you know there's a lot of scammy like this is how you cold call people and whatever i forget his name he's now with like a cold calling sas product but like he like live records his cold cold calls about like sas apps or like trucking whatever and like you you hear the guys go like no you or like whatever um like he's using it a demo the platform but like

04:50.76
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

04:54.92
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

05:01.25
Andrew
Mm-hmm.

05:15.12
Sean
It's probably one of the better, like repeatable sales motion type things that he follows. And it's, yeah, I want to say the app is called Glen Coco, but I don't remember if I'm just making Uh,

05:29.70
Andrew
Isn't Glen Coco like some pop culture reference?

05:33.96
Sean
sure. Uh, maybe. I don't know. I don't know. Oh yeah. Glenn Coco for, for you, Glenn Coco, you go Glenn Coco. All right. Uh, uh, Mean Girls.

05:43.98
Andrew
What's that from? Mean Girls. Okay, that's right.

05:47.04
Sean
Um, yeah, it is, it is, it is, it is from, it's yeah, it's Glenn Coco.

05:47.58
Andrew
That's right. That's right.

05:53.72
Sean
Um,

05:54.35
Andrew
Well, he named his app after a Mean Girls reference.

05:56.98
Sean
I guess so. I don't know if if it's his app or if he's just, it probabl...