I just fired a client for the first time. Entrepreneur |
- I just fired a client for the first time.
- I created a shoe that rapidly biodegrades and grows into a tree
- Just failed after 4 years of being an entrepreneur, I now have to take a job, get married & settle down!!
- CrewScale is on Product Hunt today!
- Why you should use Figma and not pay a penny to create ad designs
- My business failed. How do I get a job?
- How do you manage running/ being a part of multiple businesses?
- D2C – subscribe and save … 10% or 15% discount? Premium consumable CPG brand
- Home brewing online supply business
- I have to draft a contract and feedback form for an installation project
- Can I (a software dev) automate a tedious business process for you?
- Get connected on the go!
- Entrepreneurs who made your first million, how did you invest it?
- Mobile Oil Change Business Idea
- How can I further monetize existing Shopify experience?
- How to effectively start marketing on a budget?
- Running two businesses
- Is there anyone on here who makes decent income (or even a career) on YouTube?
- Need tips on building a handmade business in 2021/22
- Demand generation 101. How we launched a campaign for a software development company and generated a 7-figures pipeline in 6 months.
- Saas Sales help?
- Buying from Alibaba
- Do I really have to give up this name for my business?
- MIT Student Building App to Avoid Paying Full Price for Premium Subscriptions - Feedback needed
| I just fired a client for the first time. Posted: 19 Nov 2021 02:15 PM PST I didn't expect it to happen. We have been working together for about three months, they were actually the first regular client I had since starting my own business this year. Anyway, long short this relationship was turning toxic quickly. They had unclear and unstated expectations and only let me know when I hadn't delivered on them. The CEO never made themselves available to me except to rake me over the coals (I was hired as a fractional CMO). So today, as they were telling me how terrible a job I was doing (I have hit all KPIs agreed upon so far) I realized one of the big reasons I started my own company was so I could choose who I work for. And I so I told them that I don't want to work for someone who doesn't trust me and I don't think they should have someone at the executive level that they don't trust or feel is doing a good job. They were shocked! I don't think they'd ever been talked to like that before. Anyway, I post this to hear your stories of firing a client and weathering the storm. I have other clients, and I don't think it was a good fit, but still have a sense of guilt / fear as they were reliable revenue. [link] [comments] |
| I created a shoe that rapidly biodegrades and grows into a tree Posted: 19 Nov 2021 08:51 AM PST I've been a shoe designer/developer for 12 years now and saw how big of an issue plastic in footwear is. We produce 300 million + tons for plastic waste every year, and a substantial part of that is in footwear. I was looking at the market and no company was making strides fast enough to fix the problem. I spent 3 years researching and designing a shoe that's fully biodegradable and capable of housing an apple seed. I'm looking to make the idea of biodegradability appealing by encouraging people to plant their shoes in the ground when they're done with them. Thus, Johnny: The Shoe That Grows Into a Tree was born. I'm currently fundraising and we've gotten a lot of interest - 85% backed with one week to go! Also been covered by multiple national news outlets in Canada and the USA. I'm in talks with a few major retailers to carry the shoes in FW 2022 and Spring 2023. I'm so proud of what I've accomplished so far and looking forward to the funding a seed round shortly. It's a very new stage for me, but I'd love any tips for how to navigate the seed round stage for when I get there in the next couple months. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 19 Nov 2021 12:58 AM PST Hey fellow rebels, I just admitted to myself that I failed with this startup, it was the hardest thing I ever went through, to admit failure & to detach myself from that startup... The worst thing about all of this is that despite some success I had, nobody remembers the good times, I have literally traveled the world & got so many new skills in those short 4 years. But to most people, they thought I was playing around, wasting my life, they think I should have done as other people my age did, got a normal job, and got married (most have kids now). I expected this result, as I know the risk of startups from the start, but I never imagined it would feel like this, 3 months went by and I still am not adjusting to the new reality, I don't even know what to do with all this extra time, I am watching too many TV shows & I am losing my purpose.. Any advice, anyone went through the same shit, would love to chat, hit me up [link] [comments] |
| CrewScale is on Product Hunt today! Posted: 19 Nov 2021 12:06 PM PST Today, we launched CrewScale on Product Hunt! Crewscale is the top 1% tech talent marketplace where you can build and manage remote teams! Finding the right tech talent still remains the biggest bottleneck and pain point for entrepreneurs today. A lot of valuable time is spent trying to find and then train the right kind of talent, which slows down product development. The situation isn't any better at the talent end either. Despite having the right skill set, developers struggle to find the right opportunities, especially remote, global ones. We realized that building a distributed talent pool —where skills and attitude (not location) were the only parameters for eligibility— is a key piece of the puzzle. Presenting Crewscale to the founders and hiring managers! Too long; didn't read: Crewscale is a network of top 1% remote talent connecting high-growth companies with pre-vetted tech talent. We are here to assist you in overcoming the needless lengthy recruiting procedure in a more cost-effective manner. What Crewscale offers:
Please share your feedback here: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/crewscale P.S. We are robbed from #1 spot on Product Hunt by other products adopting unfair means to gain upvotes and reviews. We really need the community here to support our genuine efforts. [link] [comments] |
| Why you should use Figma and not pay a penny to create ad designs Posted: 19 Nov 2021 11:53 PM PST I've used many creative apps in the past such as Adobe Illustrator and Canva. However, since I've been on a tight budget for my startup Splitify, I have really been making use of Figma not only for my mockups but also for my ads. It prompted me to share some insights/advice on how to take advantage of the platform. Although I'm mentioning features that are free to everyone Figma is completely free for students! Here are some reasons to use Figma for your next flyer or ad design: Figma Community has thousands of free templates Figma has an extensive library of free templates. This is thanks to the many users on Figma's community that have created high quality templates to integrate with your designs. You can download high resolution image files for free Here is a gif showing how to export any design using an example flyer I have been working on for joinsplitify.co: It's super easy to export your Figma design into another file like a PNG. Best part is that your able to pick a scale factor which allows you to optimize on the graphic resolution you save. It's easy to collaborate Figma supports real-time collaboration without compromising speed or reliability. Additionally it's easy to share files and even create "teams" which are shared workspaces where you can collaborate on files and projects. It's easy to find the frame size you need There are built in frame sizes for phones, tablets, desktops and social media platforms. These are extremely useful in order to get the dimensions of your design right. Final thoughts Figma is a really great multi-purpose tool for all your design needs. Although there are other popular platforms like Canva and Adobe Illustrator when it comes to creating posters, flyers, and ads: - Canva doesn't let you download high res graphics for free so the resulting graphic is pixelated; also the templates are limited - Adobe Illustrator is expensive and it's extremely time intensive to learn how to use In Figma there are thousands of quality templates and you can download/save high resolution designs without paying a penny. Would love to hear if there are any other platforms you all like to use for graphic designs! [link] [comments] |
| My business failed. How do I get a job? Posted: 19 Nov 2021 04:16 AM PST Hi everyone, writing this on my throwaway. To make a long story short, I'm a 20-something that's been running an e-commerce business for the last 5 years. The business had moderate success, but now it's unprofitable and I plan to close next year. My current plan is to get a job and then start building a business on the side. I don't have enough money to start a new business right off the bat so I need to get a job. How do I even write this on my resume? Do companies even hire failed entrepreneurs? Would love to know if anyone else has been in a similar situation. For the long story: I started my e-commerce business five years ago after quitting my office job. I built the business while still working my day job and quit my day job when sales really started to pick up. I eventually hired employees and was expanding year after year. Throughout this whole time I kept my salary really low and re-invested everything into the company. Things were looking good until around 2020. During this time, I made a lot of mistakes. Our products were constantly undercut by competitors and we couldn't adapt to the changing market conditions. Our branding wasn't strong enough to make up for these problems either. Sales dropped month after month. To fix this I spent a lot of cash trying new products or lines of business. These didn't work out, and this only depleted my cash reserves. Now, I can barely pay my off my fixed costs. I think I'll finally have to pull the plug next year and start from zero. I feel like such a failure, and the stress and anxiety has been exhausting. I'm not sure I can face my employees, family, friends, and tell them that my business failed. How do I even apply to regular jobs with this whole experience? Sure I did learn a lot of skills over the past few years, but most recruiters won't see past the business failure. Luckily I still have a roof over my head and I do not have a crazy amount of debt. If you're still reading this far thank you for your time. Would love to hear if others experienced something similar. [link] [comments] |
| How do you manage running/ being a part of multiple businesses? Posted: 19 Nov 2021 11:14 PM PST I'm the sort of person with endless ideas. I see business opportunities everywhere and just recently got the nuts to give it a go after my first attempt at business failed 5 years ago. I was in my early 20s and didn't have enough experience to know business systems or management. I've learnt a lot since then! I started a few months ago and my small business is on its feet, running relatively smoothly, bringing in a small income and creating employment for a couple of people. (Small convenience store) At the same time I've been working on my parents business (sort of) and want to start to become more involved and focused to grow that too. (water tech) Then last week I was approached and asked to be a part of another business in a totally separate fashion industry. I know the work load will be intense but I think with some proper planning I can manage it. I'm more concerned that my attention will be too divided and I'm doing too many things half-a**ed instead of focusing and making one thing work properly. What is in my favour is that each of these businesses has partners that will sort of take the reins and run the administrative and sales side. My role would be more online marketing, fundraising and "other support". Am I being unrealistic trying to do it all? What systems do you have in place that allow you to monitor and grow your separate businesses? Another route I thought of was creating a marketing/ media company and taking them on as "clients". The problem is they wouldn't be able to pay me as a service provider for quite a while so I'm not sure it's worth while doing it this way. All advice welcome! [link] [comments] |
| D2C – subscribe and save … 10% or 15% discount? Premium consumable CPG brand Posted: 19 Nov 2021 07:14 PM PST I own a consumable CPG brand where we manufacture items and sell them wholesale to retailers and also sell them direct to consumer online. Our products are on the more expensive side of our product's category because we truly do source the highest quality, and as this is a throw away account, I don't mind candidly saying that the product itself is one of the best in the category (if not the best). So, our packaging and branding reflects that too. Our price point is our biggest barrier — it's not accessible for all. If our retail price point could be the same price as the avg in our category, we'd be much more popular — we just simply can't as our COGs are high. Compared to our online d2c website, retailers buy our product at wholesale for a 30% discount. And our wholesale business does represent more than half of our revenue. We would love for our d2c website to grow and represent a bigger chunk because the margins are so much better. Currently, we have a subscription program online. Subscriptions happen to represent 25% of our online business. We'd like to increase the # of subscriptions because its more of a guaranteed revenue each month (even though they can cancel/pause their subscription anytime). So, here's what I'm struggling with: Do we do a Subscribe & Save 15% or 10%? 15% does provide an opportunity for more people to try the product if price is preventing them from trying it (our conversion rate on website is very low even though its well designed. We do have a fairly high repeat customer rate.) At 15%, we're still making more margin than when we sell wholesale to retailers, but I don't want to discount or "cheapen" the brand, nor do I want d2c customers to think that our regular price point is inflated. But, I'm not sure if 10% provides enough incentive to subscribe. TLDR: should a "premium" consumable D2C CPG brand offer 10% off or 15% off as a subscription saving? Note: we do currently have 10% off for first time customers when they sign up to our mailing list. The 10% sign up code does not apply towards subscriptions. [link] [comments] |
| Home brewing online supply business Posted: 19 Nov 2021 11:33 PM PST Baking became a common during our last 3 lockdowns and we have just entered our 4th. I think home brewing could take well. It's something that used to be common but not in recent years. Also craft beers have become huge in recently. It seems like something that for little start up costs (stock, website, time) could go well at least during lockdown if not for longer. I'm in a country where alcohol is infamously expensive and also enjoyed. Any thoughts? [link] [comments] |
| I have to draft a contract and feedback form for an installation project Posted: 19 Nov 2021 09:10 PM PST It is for a solar installation project and I have to outline all the terms, conditions, guarantees, scope of work and other tiny details. Also a feedback form and guarantee document after the work is complete. I am not good at documents🙊 [link] [comments] |
| Can I (a software dev) automate a tedious business process for you? Posted: 19 Nov 2021 01:38 PM PST I'd like to start a consultancy focused on automating / streamlining operational inefficiencies in small/med sized businesses. I've learned through the years at various jobs that I'm good at automating these type of things, but unfortunately I can't use those as part of my portfolio since the projects are not able to be discussed publicly. What I'm offering: Do you have a process in your business that requires a lot of manual back-and-forth between humans? For example - when an order is created, I have to update a spread sheet, reach out to my vendor, submit the order, buy a postage label, and send the customer an email update with the tracking information. Specifically, I'm looking for processes that depend upon the coordination of multiple people working on a repetitive process. Anything from order fulfillment, landlord maintenance requests, to customer onboarding processes. I'm not charging anything. This is just me putting in the work to build up a portfolio of examples I can use for my consultancy. If we do launch an automated version of your process, I may just ask that you pay for the hosting costs (like $10-$20 max) per month. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 19 Nov 2021 03:42 PM PST Hey all, would you use an app that connects you with like-minded people on the go? Say you're a tennis fan in town for the weekend and want to play? The app would find someone near you who is also into tennis (similar age range) and you can both connect!! I've been considering this but want to know if this is something you'd use. Check out thefriendme.com and lmk your thoughts. [link] [comments] |
| Entrepreneurs who made your first million, how did you invest it? Posted: 19 Nov 2021 09:41 AM PST Besides investing back into the business ^^please upvote so more people can respond. [link] [comments] |
| Mobile Oil Change Business Idea Posted: 19 Nov 2021 02:27 PM PST Hi all! I've been tossing around the idea of a mobile oil change business idea for a while now. I've done the research for my area, and the closest one I can find is in the next major city (hour and a half away w/o rush hour traffic). I've seen these businesses and read statements, reviews, etc., and they seem to be a profitable form of business, especially once multiple clients are dedicated to the service. For background, I've got great Lube Tech experience under my belt and am currently transferring to a technical college to become an Automotive Technician. I am willing to invest what I need to get this business moving (small closed trailer, various motor oils, filters, etc.). Any thoughts on this business are appreciated, feedback is welcome! [link] [comments] |
| How can I further monetize existing Shopify experience? Posted: 19 Nov 2021 01:58 PM PST *Not Solicitation* I've been thinking about this for awhile now and I'd like all of your opinions. I've been working as an independent contractor managing a businesses e-commerce arm for the past 3 years. When I started we were at around 150k a year revenue through Shopify and now we are doing around 450k a year revenue through Shopify and consistently growing monthly. I started this right out of college as a way to make some money while I found a "real" job but here we are 3 years later with a skill I never intended on having. I was reflecting on it the other day thinking that there has to be a way to parlay this experience into another stream of income but I'm not sure at this point what that would be. I've considered starting my own store, but that of course takes a lot more than just Shopify experience. I've considered becoming an independent contractor for another business as well, but I'm not sure how that would look or if I'd even want that type of commitment. I've also thought about going the teaching route but it seems that the market is just flooded with so much BS that it wouldn't be as profitable as I would like. All that being said I know entrepreneurship always comes with a risk, I'm just trying to pick the right risk. I imagine I'm not the only person in this sub who is/was in this position so I'm curious what all of you would do, and if there are any other avenues I'm not considering. Ideally I'd like to do something that would only take 10-20 hours on any given week and would be a viable source of revenue. Any thoughts? Thank you. [link] [comments] |
| How to effectively start marketing on a budget? Posted: 19 Nov 2021 05:34 PM PST Hey all, I'm just starting up my dev company again and curious what is generally the best way to market or advertise if I have less than $100/month to spend. Is Google or fb worth it with that little of money? Thanks for any input! [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 19 Nov 2021 11:32 AM PST I'm in a situation where I manage some investment properties for my parents. I have a sole trader (essentially a sole proprietorship) set up to handle that, though I am now attempting to form a startup, but I'm worried about any implications running both 'businesses' may have on the startup; specifically funding or liability. My location is Australia. Has anyone been in a similar situation or have any advice? [link] [comments] |
| Is there anyone on here who makes decent income (or even a career) on YouTube? Posted: 19 Nov 2021 12:59 PM PST I've seen both ends of the spectrum. People who are skilled in making videos who have a likable personality, gain subscribers fairly fast and earn $40k their first year then eventually $100k+ from YouTube, but then others who have tried for years to build their channel but can't get more than a few subscribers. Anyone have a success story with your YouTube channel? How did you do it? [link] [comments] |
| Need tips on building a handmade business in 2021/22 Posted: 19 Nov 2021 04:19 PM PST I do traditional linocut printmaking as a hobby and thinking to grow it into a sustainable business. I currently only have an IG account but follower's doesn't grow as much. It have been stagnant for quite awhile regardless of what I post. I also own an Etsy shop that earns me $100 per month. How can I grow my followers and also increase my exposure to more people organically without ads? Thus, increasing my revenue from my shop. Marketing is something that I hope to improve on and any tips will be great!! [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 19 Nov 2021 07:32 AM PST Hey guys! There's a TON of content out there about demand generation - posts, articles, podcasts, videos, scams, thought leaders talking about it on LinkedIn. But how many practical case studies that reveal a detailed process and results without high-level fluff have you seen? I bet, not that much. I wanted to share a practical case study of launching a demand generation campaign for a software development company (ultracompetitive market) that generated:
The best part? It was launched with a small team and under <$10k budget. Here we go. Stage 1: ABM strategy to grow revenue by 50%Before working with us, Postindustria, a software development vendor, was growing through referrals and could offer competitive rates. As the market evolved, prices went up, the company grew and was eventually acquired by a larger business. Their new target was to grow revenue by 50% compared to the previous year. To meet the ambitious target in a changing market, the company asked us to develop a new go-to-market strategy with a more scalable way of acquiring new businesses. Step 1: Narrowing down the target market and positioningBefore we started working together, Postindustria operated in a broad and highly competitive market of software development. It's extremely hard to stand out in the marketplace with such a generic positioning, so we decided to narrow it down to two axes:
Note that while the company was able to provide different solutions to various industries, the narrow target segment and positioning enabled us to get much higher response rates and eventually win much larger contracts (10X of the previous ACV). Step 2: The ABM pilot campaign and the black swan eventInitially, we decided to launch an account-based marketing campaign to prospect and generate sales opportunities with strategic accounts from AdTech. The first step was to set up a small-scoped pilot campaign to see the market feedback and identify what should be improved in our message.
Coming back to the ABM campaign. We worked together with Postindustria on account selection and disqualification criteria, trained the team on account list building, and account research. Next step was preparing personalized pitches for every buying committee member from strategic accounts when the first Covid-19 lockdown happened across the US. We had to pause the campaign and needed to quickly develop an alternative strategy to generate sales-qualified opportunities. Step 3: Demand generation strategy on LinkedInAs an alternative to the paused ABM campaign, we decided to launch a demand generation campaign on LinkedIn. The key idea was to involve in thought leadership and social selling, Postindustria's CEO and CMO, plus active peer engagement from senior developers. There were several reasons:
These desperate attempts to grab the attention of strategic accounts proved us that when everybody zigs, you should zag. The key goals for our demand generation strategies were:
Launching a demand generation strategy takes a long time, but the benefits are priceless. One of them is the compound effect. At one point, you start seeing more referrals, more brand mentions, more media appearances, more opportunities, and, as a result, more revenue. Stage 2: Launching demand generation strategy on LinkedInAs I mentioned above, we have defined 3 pillars for our demand generation strategy:
We call this process LinkedIn Allbound Marketing which is presented below as a simple demand generation funnel. Here are the key elements of the LinkedIn demand generation and social selling strategy:
In the next sections, I'll show you how we implemented steps 1-3 with Postindustria's team, and in the bonus section, we'll share some ideas and best practices for steps 4 & 5. 1. Turn your LinkedIn profile into a landing pageHere are the two biggest mistakes people make with LinkedIn profiles. Mistake #1: Lack of clear positioning to a narrow audience. "You cannot be everything to everyone. If you decide to go north, you cannot go south at the same time." You want to get known by a specific audience (e.g. fintech SaaS) for helping them achieve a desirable result (e.g. reduce churn) better than others in the market (e.g. by 20%). See how Postindustria's CEO is narrowly positioned both in terms of audience (AdTech) and expertise (monetization SDK and header bidding). Mistake #2: Treating your LinkedIn profile as a resume, instead of a landing page. Your LinkedIn profile is your key piece of LinkedIn real estate. When you become active on Linkedin, thousands of people will see your profile. People will look at your profile to decide if they want to accept your connection request, follow you — or consider working with you. That's why you need to treat your profile as a high-converting landing page. It should convey your positioning and value proposition, share social proof, demonstrate what you can accomplish for your prospects and call them to action. What about the business LinkedIn page? Postindustria created a new LinkedIn page with a narrow positioning for AdTech and added to the profiles of the team members focused on developing this market. 2. Consistently grow your network with 4 audiencesWhen it comes to network building, many B2B businesses make four critical mistakes. Mistake #1: broad targeting. Driven by FOMO (fear of missing out), some companies reach out to anyone who could be a user of your product. But he who chases two rabbits catches none. But even when they realize they should be targeting specific niches, they still build large lists. For example, initially, Postindustria built a list of 200 companies. But we didn't have the resources to prospect 200 businesses. We added more disqualification criteria to narrow down the focus and ended up with 15 accounts. Mistake #2: Prospecting the decision-makers only. According to Harvard Business Review, the number of people involved in B2B solutions purchases has climbed from an average of 5.4 to 6.8 back in 2017. Nowadays, buyers take longer to decide, involving even more people than before. By connecting to different members of the buying committee, you'll gain a deeper understanding of the needs and objections of the accounts and be able to better influence the different buyers. Because Postindustria was prospecting enterprise companies, we had 7-10 buying committee members per account and ended up with a list of 100 targets LinkedIn profiles. Mistake 3: Only connecting with potential customers. Connecting to prospects fitting your Ideal Customer Profile is a must. But if that's all you, you'll miss out on three more important message-amplifying audiences: Engagers – People who are highly active on content, love your content, but will never buy from you. Asset owners – These are the people that are doing thought leadership and are followed by your target audience, run communities, niche blogs, or newsletters and can help to expand your reach. Co-pilots – People who serve the same audience but sell different solutions to your ICP. For Postindustria, one of the key goals was establishing relationship with OpenX that has the largest independent ad exchange network for publishers and demand partners. Mistake 4: Using cold, generic (and often automated) invitations to connect. This is not only ineffective but can hurt you in the long run. If too many people you invite connecting decline your invitation and report you by clicking "I don't know this person", LinkedIn will start requiring you to provide an email address for all your future invitations to connect. This will effectively prevent you from proactively building your network. But how can you connect with people without being spammy? With Postindustria, we use the following approaches:
3. Warm up & nurture target accountsHere are 3 steps we used to warm up and connect with strategic accounts. Step #1: Reach different buyers through a diversified content strategy. A diversified content strategy means that the different team members were focusing on different buying committee members of their target accounts. In Postindustria, the CEO reached out to executives and posted content dedicated to the CTOs or senior product engineers. Their CMO was appealing to the marketing team and senior tech engineers. A senior architect was also occasionally posting tech content that is related to the IT department. Here is why diversified content strategy is important:
Step #2: Create a map of information needs. Map of Informational Needs is a document that summarizes all the topics, potential questions your target audience might have regarding your product or your services. The key is to identify the topics in which your target audience is genuinely interested. A Map of Informational Needs saves you time by helping you avoid irrelevant content that gets ignored. Here are 5 key steps for creating the map of informational needs:
The finest content demonstrates your expertise and addresses the concerns of your target audience. Step #3: Create the content plan following the 40/40/20 strategy. To keep the audience engaged, we used the 40/40/20 content strategy. Here is what this means:
Step #4: Create a content production flow. Over time, Postindustria has built a dedicated content creation process, involving a content agency:
It's interesting to see how Postindustria evolved their process and the key lessons they learned (taken from the interview with the company's CMO):
Step #5: Set up an internal engagement pod. Postindustria asked more than one hundred experts working for them if they wanted to help the company's efforts on LinkedIn. About 30% of the team installed a special tool in their browser, that allowed the content manager to use the tool to arrange for the different team members to like and comment on our posts. This is important because of:
Stage 3: The Account-Based Market Research CampaignAs a part of the efforts to scale Postindustria's LinkedIn demand generation strategy, we helped the team map out and set up an account-based market research campaign. It was a large campaign, including three audiences I mentioned earlier (the ICPs, engages, and co-pilots). The campaign helped them to connect and engage more target buyers, created an expert industry report together with a market leader Open X, and positioned themselves as industry experts. As a result of the partnership with Open X, they also got new collaboration opportunities. The insights they got from the market research also generated lots of content ideas for Linkedin. Here is the overview of the process. Connect & Qualify Campaign Blueprint Essentially, you're featuring your target accounts in an industry-relevant publication (e.g. industry report). The "connect" part is about building relationships with buyers through different touchpoints: the interview, a thank you message, a LinkedIn recommendation, the moment you publish your content, etc. But the most important part is qualification. During the interview, you can ask them a bunch of qualification questions. That will not only allow you to identify a potential opportunity but will also give you a lot of information to personalize your follow-up and your pitch. In addition, with this work, you're creating unique, expert content you can use to drive more awareness and to further engage your target accounts. Takeaways & Lessons LearnedLong-term thinking pays offIf you want to be successful, long-term thinking is essential. Many businesses have a win-now mindset, believing that 'we need leads right now or revenue right now.' And even if they try demand generation, they give up too early. You must dedicate some effort to establishing a reputation. Postindustria began with a list of accounts, which they then refined. In addition to receiving sales qualified opportunities and revenue from closed deals, Postindustria was gaining the advantage of establishing themselves as a specialist in this industry. As Dmytro Kustov, the CMO put it during our interview where he shared his experiences about this campaign: "LinkedIn is amazing. LinkedIn really works, and it works much better for B2B businesses with big contracts than ads or other channels. We can concentrate all our focus, all our activities on LinkedIn, and it would still be cost-efficient. LinkedIn is a really amazing tool, which would still have space for newcomers." The results compound over time.As a result of this strategy, Postindustria began to appear in the news feeds of businesses that were not previously on their list. Since people were visiting their profiles, Postindustria was creating a wide range of opportunities that had a compound effect and resulted in:
That is why we advise implementing a daily routine. Because, with each day you repeat your routine, you're growing your key assets (brand, awareness, skills, partnerships…), which in turn, have a multiplicative effect on everything you do. You need a proven process and a teamA lot of companies believe that you need to hang out on LinkedIn all day long, have 10.000+ followers, send hundreds of messages, or run expensive LinkedIn ads. The truth is that you don't need any of that. You need a proven LinkedIn demand generation strategy and a process that positions you as a trusted advisor to your target audience, generates demand from the target accounts, connects & qualifies the members of your buying committee, and leverages engagement and buying signals to activate accounts. And you need a team. If you are an executive and you have one marketer or one product specialist, it's enough to start, but the key to building a multi-million pipeline is building a team. ..and that's it. Hope you enjoyed it and get some ideas :) LMK if you have any questions. I didn't include screenshots from the campaigns and some thoughts on what could improved in that campaign. If you want to dive deeply and learn more, check this blog post. [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 19 Nov 2021 03:58 PM PST After years of being self employed as a mortgage broker and being decently successful at it, I'm finally at my limit with how things are out of control these days and have decided to close down. I'm still late 20s but plan to start a family soon and work life balance is important while still maintaining a remote work style so I decided to go into Saas Sales. Now my biggest issue is not having experience in Saas/Software sales and being Canadian I want to work for US companies. Does anyone have any advice on how this might be done or who/where I'd find good resources for this? [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 19 Nov 2021 03:19 PM PST This might be a better question for /r/legaladvice so I'll post there, but I'll ask here as well. I have a fitness clothing startup and have purchased leggings from an Alibaba supplier that shares similarities in design with Lululemon's leggings. Not all aspects of the legging's design are the same (namely fabric composition, most of the seams, and of course branding), but some are (color, waistband design, and seams in the inner thigh). Is this legal? Am I under threat of getting a cease and desist from a company like Lululemon or Gymshark for having certain elements of my clothing be the same as theirs? As far as I know, there is a major issue with counterfeit products on Alibaba, but the leggings I purchased are unbranded and not identical to Lululemon's leggings. [link] [comments] |
| Do I really have to give up this name for my business? Posted: 19 Nov 2021 03:12 PM PST Hello, any advice would be appreciated. So I would like to start a small e-commerce business. I have a name in mind that'd I like you use, and it's something common sounding, like this: "knitting needles shop" But there are a few people using very similar names for their online store, like: "knitting needles handmade" Now, the name is not trademarked by anyone, and I DO want to trademark it for myself. Do I stand a chance in keeping it with this tiny variance? [link] [comments] |
| MIT Student Building App to Avoid Paying Full Price for Premium Subscriptions - Feedback needed Posted: 19 Nov 2021 02:58 PM PST Hi! I'm at MIT student working on building an application that enables people to take advantage of group discounts by matching people with other people! I would love to get any on my product and the problem I'm focusing on: joinsplitify.co [link] [comments] |
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