Blog | @DanMartell

Aug 07

The 3 Activities of the SaaS Sales Process

By Dan Martell | Sales, Startups, Strategy | No Comments

What would it feel like hiring 150 sales people for your company in 6 months?

That’s the question I asked Scot, the founder of Classy, a few months ago.

I’ll fast track his answer… essentially, he started out for many years being the primary salesperson, then hired around him, but remained inseparable from that process.

After years of hustling and grinding he eventually hired his first VP of Sales.

I still remember our first advisory board meeting and how excited I got about their new plans to scale sales.

How did he do it? Read More

Jul 31

The Emotions To Nail When Creating a SaaS Lead Magnet

By Dan Martell | Community, Marketing, Startups | No Comments

If you want a good laugh, watch this week’s video.

There may be some singing / rapping in it (if you want to call it that).

What’s important though, are the lyrics.

“Nurture – nurture – nurture that lead!”

Even more important…

… how many leads are you generating per month?

If that number is 0, or not growing, then the business isn’t growing.

Period.

The best way to capture a visitor who’s on your site is to offer them valuable content… Read More

Jul 24

5 Things That All GREAT Startups Have

By Dan Martell | Growth Engine, Startups, Strategy | No Comments

“This is totally a company you would create!”

That’s what people would say every time I showed them the prototype for Clarity.

My passion for connecting people to have a conversation was something I had been doing for years…

… first starting with Founder Dinners, and morphing over the years to my entrepreneurial events like Maple Summit, Idea to Exit, etc.

What I quickly realized is that most great companies were started by founders who had a passion for the problem way before they discovered the solution. Read More

Jul 17

The Audience Triangle – 5 Stages of Customer Intent

By Dan Martell | Marketing, Sales, Strategy | No Comments

If I grabbed 100 people, and asked them how many needed to buy a pair of jeans – only 3 would raise their hands…

… but 7% would be “In Market” (the 2nd stage of the Audience Triangle) and will be buying soon.

What about the other 90%?

How do you speak to them?

That’s what I cover in this week’s video where I define the 5 stages and the different “buying intents” of each.

If you do this right, you can create marketing content that will take care of the market until they’re ready to buy.

Here’s how it works. Read More

Jul 10

The 3 Inputs to a Great Product Roadmap

By Dan Martell | Marketing, Startups, Strategy | No Comments

When I first built Clarity.fm, it wasn’t a marketplace.

It was a call list app.

The concept was that I could add anyone to my list, with phone number and description, then it would robo call each person, reading to me the name of the person and reason for the call.

In short…

I was building a productivity tool, NOT a marketplace.

A strategic “face palm” that would greatly handicap the business’ potential for growth. (#2 on my list of inputs to build great product).

Even after I held a 300 person launch event in my hometown of Moncton, I refused to build search into the product.

What I did instead was build a page that listed all of the experts who were available for a call.

Stupid.

It wasn’t until after months of getting emails to our support team that I realized we needed to add a search feature.

What happened next was the beginning of what made Clarity a huge success. Read More

Jul 03

The Kano Analysis: Customer Needs Are Ever Changing

By Dan Martell | Marketing, Startups, Strategy | 2 Comments

Have you ever heard of the Kano Model?

I hadn’t either… until my buddy Merv told me about it.

Here’s a diagram that gives you a visual:

If you think that looks complicated, you’re not alone.

It took a bit of marinating for my brain to fully “get” how much value this model has to offer.

But let me tell you… Read More

Jun 26

5 Reasons Customers Churn (a.k.a Fire You) And What To Do About It

By Dan Martell | Marketing, Metrics, Startups | No Comments

What’s your churn?

If you don’t know this number, get it.

Better yet, do you know why they’re churning?

When I was building my company Flowtown, we had a 12% monthly churn.

Not good.

That meant that after only 8.3 months we had lost ALL of the customers we had worked so hard to attract & convert?

Just so you know, that makes for a HORRIBLE business.

Your goal should be 8% PER YEAR (for B2B SaaS)!

So if you’re bleeding customers, what do you do? Read More

Jun 19

How To Create a Business Playbook™ (aka SOP’s: Standard Operating Procedures) for Your Startup

By Dan Martell | Productivity, Startups, Strategy | 7 Comments

Are you down with SOP’s?

Some call em’ Standard Operating Procedures, I call them Playbooks.

If you’re tired of putting out fires in your business, then you’ll need them to keep your sanity.

Recently I had the privilege of having dinner w/ the Godfather of system design for entrepreneurs, Michael Gerber (author of The E-Myth / 10M copies sold).

I shared my story of how his book transformed everything for me.

At 23 I was set on starting another company for the 3rd time (the first two failed), but I was deadset on doing it differently.

Listen to the full story on my Facebook page (10m21s).

Gerber’s book, taught me a new way to think about business. Read More

Jun 12