Proposify Biz Chat

What it’s about With Dave Kirby’s extensive experience in investment banking, mergers and acquisitions, and with startups, he’s a wealth of knowledge when it comes to selling businesses. In this interview, Dave talks about how to prepare, evaluate and sell your business, and the steps you should take to protect yourself. He breaks the sales process down into reasoning, organization, finances, and the importance of staying focused on your valuation.

What it’s about After starting his company, ElasticSales, in 2012, Steli Efti was on the hunt for a tool that could help his salespeople sell more successfully. Through research and testing, it was pretty clear that most of the existing solutions out there focused on turning salespeople into data entry specialists. Rather than settling, Steli decided to build a solution of his own; a CRM now called Close.io. In this interview, Steli talks about how being authentic makes you attractive, outlines three different sales models, and why you shouldn’t be afraid to make a change when it’s needed.

I used to work for someone who owned his business, and every morning when he arrived, he’d march right past his (mostly) bright eyed and bushy tailed employees without making eye contact, without saying ‘Good Morning’, without even a royal wave of acknowledgement. Then he would disappear to his private office, likely never to be seen again unless you had a meeting with him. It drove me bananas. Not saying good morning might sound like a small, insignificant thing but to me, it said everything about how this guy might be the owner of his company, but he certainly wasn’t leading that company. You might be thinking, “Maybe he isn’t a morning person, maybe he needs coffee before he starts, maybe he’s super busy.” Here’s what I say: Baloney. A business leader sets the tone, a leader recognizes his team, and a leader acts like a grown-up, regardless of how caffeine-deprived he might be. I know a lot of people who own businesses. I don’t know as many who are leaders in their business. Knowing the difference between

What it’s about Mario has spent years in the corporate world in various sales positions, his last role being vice president, sales for a large corporation. He recently decided to take a more entrepreneurial path by starting his new company, Vengreso, and is fast-tracking its growth. In this interview, Mario talks about staying focused on shorter-term goals, identifying problems your product or service is trying to solve, and trusting your business partners’ decisions.

What inspired me to be an entrepreneur When I was younger I never thought I wanted to own a business. Some of my entrepreneurial friends had parents who owned businesses, but not me. My dad was a maintenance worker, my mother a nurse, and neither of them felt owning a business was a viable career move. My parents knew that 8 out of 10 entrepreneurs who start businesses fail within the first 18 months, and that fail rate was enough to scare them into scaring me away from the thought of starting one. But when I was 14 my friend was looking to pass off his newspaper route, the job that funded his much coveted video game and action figure collection. I was too young to get a job at a fast food joint so wanting some financial independence for  video games of my own, I asked him if I could take it over. For more than three years I would spend over an hour delivering newspapers after school every day of the week and early in the morning on weekends.

What it’s about Mike Zeller has ample experience and success in leadership and business ownership, founding multiple businesses at once. His involvement in each of his businesses pushed him to help others follow in his footsteps through his Rising Stars Mastermind mentorship program, and his Entrepreneur’s Roadmap to Freedom eCourse. In this interview, Mike explains how to be a better business owner, leader, and how to not get caught up in the weeds.

What it’s about In this interview, Patrick and I discuss some methods marketing teams can use to avoid scope creep, what we believe can help teams stay focused on their metrics, and the most efficient way to finish multiple marketing projects within a short deadline.

What it’s about John Doherty is in the industry of helping people, whether it be by playing matchmaker between clients and agencies, or by working with agency owners to improve their businesses.   In this interview, John shares some key points he believes every agency should follow to grow, what you need to do to close more leads, and the importance of managing your client’s expectations.

What it’s about In the hustle and bustle of business it’s easy to think that most companies, large or small, are cold, corporate, and don’t care about you as a customer. Nathan Kontny wants to change the way business is done by making it personal. Whether it’s making an email more personal, or seeking out other business owners for advice on a product you’re working on, getting personal is the key to success for Nathan. In this interview, I talk to Nathan about how he built a relationship over time to take over Highrise, why he believes in being flexible and adaptable, and the importance of opening up about yourself.

What it’s about SEO can be a confusing marketing tool to wrap your head around, especially when articles discussing algorithm changes are shared like wildfire. When you’re not an SEO expert, figuring out which articles are accurate and which rules to apply to your own content to boost your ranking is kind of like taking a shot in the dark. As a leading SEO expert, Kyle Roof oversees tests aimed at determining what is or isn’t a ranking factor in Google’s algorithm. If you’ve come across contradictory answers in your research about best SEO practices, this Biz Chat episode will clear up some of the biggest misconceptions for you, and highlight where you should be focusing your efforts. In this interview, I talk to Kyle about some common SEO myths, why you don’t need to overthink your content, and the importance of internal linking.   

I still remember the excitement of hearing the “ding” of my inbox and opening an email with the subject line, “Web design proposal.” I had delivered a strong proposal to a warm lead, and I needed this project to make payroll. Quickly, my nervous excitement turned to disappointment as I read the canned response: “Thank you for submitting your proposal. Unfortunately, you were not the successful bidder. All the best to you and should you have any questions, please let me know.” We’ve all faced the sting of rejection before and it sucks. It made me wonder if closing a deal is just a random luck of the draw, or if there’s anything I could do to improve our success rate. Then I read a book called Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff that deepened my understanding of sales and changed how I think about pitching. I’ll outline a few principles from the book to help you improve how you make a sales pitch that closes the deal, whether you're pitching to a powerful type-A personality or a geeky analyst.

What it’s about In this interview, I talk to Gary about the importance of learning who your customer is, why you should use a variety of sources when it comes to pushing out content, and a sneaky way you can funnel your audience.  

If you're like me, you probably receive at least one or two cold emails every day. At least. It either slithers into your inbox or maybe it's the even more dreaded LinkedIn cold email. The one we scan for less than a second before hitting the delete key. According to some tests Yesware ran, they received a 30-50% response rate from cold email. On the other end of the spectrum, Shane Snow from Contently sent 1,000 test emails to executives and received a 1.7% response rate. Suffice to say, results may vary. This got me wondering what makes for the best cold email — the one that evokes a response, and what goes into a terrible email — the ones we ignore every day.

What it’s about With a background in marketing, finance and computer science, Patrick Edmonds was an ideal hire to help spike Proposify’s growth. He’s well-versed in SEO, social media, analytics, and as Chief Marketing Officer, he maps the marketing road at Proposify every time Google or Facebook change their algorithms. He’s a whiz at ensuring Proposify is seen and heard from a wide, but focused audience and he’s keeps a keen eye on keeping our growth upwardly mobile. In this interview, I talk to Patrick about the power of lead magnets, how to lure people to your product or service, and the importance of tracking your performance.  

What is social selling? Social selling is leveraging your social network to find the right prospects with whom to build trust, nurture relationships, and ultimately achieve your sales goals.   Beyond tweeting, “Hey! Check this out!”, social selling is about finding ways to authentically engage with people on social media who have a problem that you can solve, or a solution you can sell. The key is to allow people to engage with your brand on the platform of their choice.   Social selling is basically a backlash against the age-old cold call. With 90% of people ignoring cold outreach, it’s obvious that sales professionals needed to find a more authentic, personalized approach to selling.

What it’s about Opportunity knocked for Buzz Sumo in 2013, and it was Steve Rayson doing the knocking. Having bootstrapped and sold companies in the past, Steve saw huge potential in Buzz Sumo after stumbling upon a beta version created by his co-founders. Buzz Sumo is similar to Google, but as a social search engine they go a step further. They allow you to search the most shared and liked content, research who is sharing or linking to it, and find out how people are engaging with competitor content. In this interview, I talk to Steve about how Buzz Sumo is essential to content research, what he believes makes great content marketing, how he and his team developed a pricing strategy that worked for them, and his strategy for avoiding churn.   

Between my years in the agency world and then as a freelancer, I’ve been responsible for making sure a lot of projects stayed on the rails. Scope creep was an especially evil enemy, and the term usually evoked its own soundtrack in my head. You know that terrifying, urgent, knife-slashing violin music from Psycho? I’m sure you’re more than familiar with the dreaded scope creep. It’s when features, deliverables, or expectations slowly get added to a project without the budget or timeline being adjusted accordingly. Project scope creep is like a leaky toilet. Each drop is not a big deal on its own but compounded over days, weeks, and even months and you end up with, well, a sh*t show.

What it’s about Barry O’Kane of Endzone Software believes in helping clients handle their issues. He also believes that planning how you help them ahead of time is pertinent to the success and happiness of your team and your client. Retainers can bring stability to a business, get them out of the firefighting mode of needing to win projects, and provide assets within a company or contract.  For Barry, selling your clients retainers is all about proving your value consistently. If you’re selling retainers, you should not just be providing value but demonstrating it regularly, and moving toward a structured support process that will make you and your client look good. “If you can approach the conversation with the fundamental belief that the retainers are more valuable to the client, the conversation is very different”. In this interview, Barry talks about how to assess and improve how you currently support your clients, how to structure retainers, and ways to demonstrate value consistently so you keep clients

Let’s say you sold a $10,000/month retainer for 6-12 month contract. If your goal is to simply get to the end of the contract, deliver the promised results, and send the client packing so you can move on to the next thing, you’re thinking about your business the wrong way. You need a client retention strategy. Obviously, your goal should be to keep your clients past their contract and have them renew year after year.

What it’s about Andrew Breen of Outshine LOVES Google AdWords. While SEO is interesting to him, it’s the immediacy, measurability, and amount of data AdWords offers that fascinates him. He definitely hasn’t jumped on the bandwagon that AdWords is overpriced or on its way out. To Andrew, AdWords is the gold standard for digital advertising effectiveness. “AdWords will not be a homerun of value, but it will be a solid single every time. What you’re doing is capturing people when they’re actively looking for the problem that you solve.” In this interview, Andrew talks about some common misconceptions around paid advertising, mistakes people are making, and how to get more from AdWords.