🌊 Wave #2: Here's an idea you should build

May 11, 2020

Good morning and happy Monday y'all. Let's make this week a good one. Although, I feel like there's only 3 days in a week now:

1. Yesterday

2. Today

3. Tomorrow

😂

Presentations

HOW TO DELIVER PROPOSALS

We do lots of coaching around initial meetings and demos. From my experience, not enough around delivering proposals.

A few key misses that I've noticed:

1) Reps not asking who the proposal is REALLY for

2) Making the proposal very technical

Let's cover #1.

  • For example, I had a prospect this week and asked them, "Hey. When we present this to you next week. Are we presenting it to you? Or are we coaching you on the proposal so that you can present it to your VPs?"

Zoom in on this question... "Or are we coaching you on the proposal so that you can present it to your VPs?"

Is your economic buyer/decision maker in the meeting where you deliver the proposal? If not, likely your champion is going to take the proposal and deliver it themselves to the VP.

So, what's that mean?

  • Ask your champion whether they will be delivering the proposal internally

  • If so, COACH THEM ON HOW TO DELIVER THE PROPOSAL

Treat the proposal meeting with your prospect as an educational session.

Sales & Marketing

AM I A SALES PROFESSIONAL, OR AM I A MARKETER?

I have a hunch. That hunch is that we are going to see sales professionals learn more marketing tactics. Perform marketing motions. Use marketing channels to promote the product they sell. Think of how "instagram" influencers are #1 for B2C brands today.

B2B marketing becomes best friends with B2C marketing

Sellers will take B2C tactics and install them in their own prospecting motions.

  • We are already seeing a huge wave of sellers study copywriting (myself included). The best skill you can learn as a sales professional right now.

Business Idea

SHOPIFY MEETS WORDPRESS (Someone Please Build This)

As we see sales professionals take a larger interest in marketing, tactics. they will need more channels to promote themselves.

Now here's the idea... someone should build Shopify but for people vs. physical products. Give people an outlet to promote their content with unique offers.

You are curious about example use cases:

  • Imagine a prospect comes to my personal page. They download a particular asset I have available. I have a sequence of emails delivered to the prospect (sorry y'all, can't get rid of sequences!) This would be a backend plugin app that comes out of the box or that others can build.

  • Someone comes to my page. I have a popup for a webinar I'm doing in 3 days that I got paid to do. I receive the prospect's email and give them reminders every couple of days for it. (Another customizable app to build).

  • I launched a course. Pay $5 right now by clicking the button at the bottom of this post to receive the course.

  • Reviews. People can leave me reviews on the content I post. LinkedIn tries to do this with recommendations. Not widely used.

  • Sign up to receive texts. Receive a text when I ______

I can think of 1,000,000 ideas of what can be built here for engagement - these are a few.

Texting

ARE B2B BUSINESS SLEEPING ON TEXTING?

Texting is a hot topic in eCommerce right now. Email is saturated. There's lots of noise. The open rate on texts is 96%.

I'm thinking what you're thinking... Will business professionals want to give their phone numbers to businesses?

My take? If the offer is strong enough. I definitely won't be just giving out my number (you?).

What are some offers that would prompt you to give your number to a SaaS business?

Some ideas that come to mind are:

  • Enter your number now to receive an instant personalized demo

  • Receive a free 7-day trial of the product by entering your number

  • FREE consultation/analysis in exchange for your number

Now, I'm not sure if any SaaS businesses are doing this yet. But as call & email channels become more saturated, this may the next wave!

WHAT ELSE IS SURFING?