Greg’s Update:

Fails:

  • Didn’t Finish indoctrination campaign for MME but almost done
  • been working way too late
  • I didn’t Organize my calendar/week as much as I’d like to so I still have work there.
    • Mon / Friday is working ON the business (pretty close to this)
    • Tue-Thur = calls etc.
    • But give 2 hours a day to implementation right now. It’s actually been a bit more but that’s ok.
    • Overall, I just felt a bit all over the place.

Results:  

  • MME $3488 New Biz: $2500 one time this month and $2793. In 30 days it will be $4190 when the monthly of the 3 latest customers roll in. Combined this month earnings are $8781.
  • 3 sales calls and all were one call closes. So far only 2 people haven’t joined on.
  • Updated pricing model to include a launch fee
    • Includes multiple campaigns and automation roadmap which also helps cashflow and helps from the upfront work we’re doing which is a lot.
  • I got the landing page up and it’s connected to a campaign that is collecting leads and letting prospects schedule a discovery call
  • We documented our onboarding process and identified questions that would streamline our launch call and I’m 90% complete with a pre-launch call questionnaire that new customers will get before they can schedule the launch call.
    • I’m using a tool called Dilogr which integrates with IS and is pretty rad.
    • So when people buy, they get taken to a page to complete the questionnaire (and an email to access it) and then once complete, they’ll get a thank you page where they can schedule their call. (Need to finish that setup and push live)
  • After we get that in place Lisa will be able to take on launch calls and they should only be 30’ish minutes vs an hour.
  • I’ve been working a bunch on implementation so just doing the work and learnings.
  • Some tasks are taking super long right now but that’s ok as we iron out the process and create SOPs for tasks.
  • We’re now at 10 customers and i have one sales call next week that was scheduled that will be the 11th if they are the right fit and then we’re holding off on bringing on new clients for a few weeks to get some things squared away.
  • I’ve decided to move from Teamwork and use HelpScout, Trello and Google Docs together to manage our tasks.
    • I’ve started setting up the foundation but haven’t rolled that into production yet. I hope to do that next week.
    • I reviewed Podio extensively and like it a lot but the upfront work to customize it is just not something I’m ready for. So we’ll see how things progress.
  • Customer implementation call for MME and had our insiders call this week.
  • Entrepreneurs Scorecard Setup and started tracking that via Rescue Time and Toggl (set the team up)

Plans:

  • Push the new onboarding questionnaire process live
  • Move the team to the new HelpScout/Trello solution and notify customers of the new process
    • and the start the relevant SOP
  • Finish Roadmap template and Complete 2-3 Build & Launch Roadmaps
  • 1 sales call
  • Setup onboarding experience in Infusionsoft so that it auto bills into the monthly at the 4 week point or at trigger of Internal form.
  • Launch call for one of the new customers
  • Go camping next weekend!

Justin’s Update:

Fails:

  • Honestly, I got everything I wanted to get done last week so I’m feeling pretty good. No real failures to report.

Results:

  • $25.8k with $800 MRR for the software
    • Added a couple new DFY customers this week. One was from our new sales rep that just came in this morning.  
  • I know I mentioned my goal for this year was to get to $25k in MRR by the end of the year. Took us 8 months, but now the final four months I want to try doubling this to get to $50k.
  • Officially started with two sales people this week. We finalized commission structure, had them sign work agreements, and all that good stuff. Got them set up in ZenPayroll and then had them set up direct deposit so I can pay out commissions quickly and easily.
  • We got Close.io setup and I trained the reps on how to use it. The closer for me was the call recording.
    • Listened to Adam’s (sales rep) call on the deal that closed and honestly he nailed it just as well as I would have done so this has me feeling real good about his potential and really the potential of growing out a sales team in general.
    • Doing a round robin thing with the two reps right now for inbound leads.
    • Adam is doing it full-time so he’s doing some prospecting on his own. In fact, he also generated a software sale from one of his own contacts. So he’s really starting to get into a groove.
  • The first day of sales training I had a lead come in from LinkedIn that said he saw I viewed his profile. Gave me his number and told me to call him. So I set it all up in Close.io and recorded the call.
    • I just had just finished telling the team the calls last for about 15 minutes usually. This call was 15 minutes and 5 seconds and he signed up on the spot.
    • It almost felt like it was a planted sale since this was the very first one in our CRM…timing was amazing.
  • Hired a developer on Upwork specifically to increase our page speed.
    • Page speed is a factor in search engine rankings and Google’s page speed score was a 58/100. Hubspot’s website grader had us down as a 19/30 and Pingdom had us as a 64/100.
    • We went to a 94/100 from google, 25/30 on hubspot and 85/100 from Pingdom.
  • Sent out a survey to the list and we have several talking about email quality so this is something we are actively trying to improve.
    • Ironically, we have also gotten feedback on how good the data is, but we want a more positive experience all the way around.
    • Obviously, no way to get to 0% bounce rates, but we want to work to get closer to that number as much as we can.
  • Got a letter from a lawyer about how the Workado logo is a trademark violation. Even said it was an intentional violation because of how similar it is, color scheme wise and everything.
    • Used 99 designs and reviewed over 50 different ones and settled in on this design.
    • Sure enough, it looks just like it. They are in a somewhat related field also.
    • I have settled on the new logo and the designer is just finishing it up so I’ll have to get that up on the site next week.
  • Decided to move forward with hiring a customer success manager. This is a key hire for us and there were several deciding factors that went into making this decision:
    • 1. Backed up
    • 2. Increase value to clients
    • 3. Help retention
    • 4. Help offload some of Michael’s day to day tasks
    • 5. Allow Michael to focus more on higher value tasks like the marketing side of the business

Plans:

  • Need to develop a commission tracking plan as things could get out of hand quick since there’s recurring commissions involved.
  • Start interviewing candidates for our Customer Success Manager position which I would like to have filled in the next couple of weeks.
  • Really start to map out next phases for the software now that we are starting to get this initial phase stabilized.
  • Create an onboarding sequence for users of the software to really help onboard them outside of just the demo video that pops up when they first log in.
  • First tradeshow on Thursday

Zero To Scale Insiders Update:

Results:

  • MRR: $979 (lost two members)
  • Forum is designed and categories / topics are created. It is ready for prime time.
    • Had developer at my agency go in and restrict access to the forum for only logged in users.

Plans:

  • Populate the forum with initial resources for charter members to review
  • We still need to decide on some goals and metrics for ourselves to measure success and push forward

Episode Takeaways:

Justin Takeaway:

  • Things are moving fast right now. Another level of speed will be coming as more sales from the sales team start taking shape and then again with another new hire in the customer success role. That new higher allows us to do more marketing which then just continues to ramp things up.

Greg Takeaways

  • Need to stop taking on new customers and get our own systems dialed in and ducks in a row with our new process and get some of the work implemented.

Resources Mentioned:

Stay Connected:

Join our closed Facebook group for continuous discussion and let us know your thoughts on today’s podcast and feel free to discuss ways to be transparent in your business.

We’d love to get a 5 star rating on iTunes from you. We don’t plan on asking for this in the episodes themselves since most people are doing other things when they’re listening, but we do plan on asking here. We’ll share the ratings and reviews in the episodes as well. Feel free to email us when you leave a review with your business information and we’ll include it in our shoutout.

We are on Twitter – so follow us!

Want to leave a voice recording that we use on the show? Call in to our voicemail box here with your question!

You can always catch us on Stitcher and SoundCloud as well!