WordPress & Startup Boot Strapping Founders, it’s All About the Sells, Baby!
Unlock unparalleled success in B2B lead generation through cutting-edge growth hacking methods showcased in this show.
We reveal powerful strategies that transform ordinary campaigns into extraordinary ones, enabling you to drive targeted traffic, capture qualified leads, and achieve unprecedented revenue growth. If you’re ready to take your B2B sales game to new heights, don’t hesitate – hit play and start revolutionizing your lead generation today.
With Special Guest Adam Springer, B2B Growth Hacking B2B Lead Generation Expert and the host of the popular “Startup Sales” podcast.
Adam’s Show Recommendations
Chris Do – https://thefutur.com/people/chris-do
Bethany Ayers – https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethanyayers
Lemlist – https://www.lemlist.com/
Expand.io – https://expandi.io/?fp_ref=8dhhjhz4
This Week Show’s Sponsors
Sensei LMS: Sensei LMS
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
BlogVault: BlogVault
The Show Main Notes
[00:00:22.590] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the WP-Tonic This Week in WordPress and SaaS. It’s episode 778. The episodes are just flying past my beloved tribe. I haven’t got my co-host this week. He is moving houses this week. What a pain in the posterior. But Kurt will be back next week. But we’ve got a great guest with us. We’ve got Adam Springer with us. He’s an expert of growth hacking and lead generation business to business. Plus, he’s the host of the popular Startup For Sales podcast. The one which I listen to. I’m been looking forward to this chat with Adam. We’re going to be discussing all things sales for business to business. Obviously, you’re a WordPress professional or a SaaS startup. This is a really important, going to be an important discussion. Adam, can you quickly introduce yourself to the tribe? Sure.
[00:01:28.110] – Adam Springer
I don’t know where to start. I’m from Seattle originally, but I’m now living in Israel, the high tech startup market. But I guess I started in America with two of my own companies, moved to Israel and then I started working for other people and doing sales for B2B companies. Now I’m independent again and helping consultants and other companies with their growth hacking needs.
[00:01:59.500] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. Before we go into the meat, potatoes, for this great interview, I’ve got a couple of messages from our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks.
[00:02:09.920] – Adam Springer
Are you looking for ways to make.
[00:02:11.870] – Jonathan Denwood
Your content more engaging?
[00:02:13.760] – Adam Springer
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[00:02:14.710] – Jonathan Denwood
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[00:02:15.580] – Adam Springer
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[00:02:17.910] – Jonathan Denwood
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[00:02:19.800] – Adam Springer
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[00:02:20.930] – Jonathan Denwood
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[00:02:22.220] – Adam Springer
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[00:02:26.250] – Jonathan Denwood
Pause.
[00:02:26.610] – Adam Springer
Videos and display quizzes.
[00:02:28.210] – Jonathan Denwood
Lead generation.
[00:02:29.060] – Adam Springer
Forms, surveys, and more. For a 20% off.
[00:02:31.570] – Jonathan Denwood
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[00:02:32.330] – Adam Springer
The tribe, Jess used the code WP Tonic, all one word, when checking out and give.
[00:02:37.200] – Jonathan Denwood
Sense a try today. We’re coming back, folks. I just want to point out we’ve got some great special offers from the sponsors, plus a curated list of the best WordPress plug-ins, which you can utilize on your clients’ projects, so you don’t have to hunt the internet trying to find what’s the best solution. That’s fantastic, isn’t it? My beloved tribe. You can get all these goodies by going over to wp-tonic. Com/deals, wp-tonic-tonic. Com/deals, and you find everything there. What more could you ask for? I know a lot more, but that’s all you’re going to get from that page. There we go. We could ask for whatever we like, but it’s very unlikely that we’re going to give you the love you tribe. Let’s go into the first question. Adam, what are some of the leading trends that you’ve observed over the last couple of years around the business sales, or sales in general? Anything come on your radar that you think has changed the climate, the landscape to some extent?
[00:03:51.200] – Adam Springer
Truthfully, no.
[00:03:52.610] – Jonathan Denwood
I could go for the cheap answer. Well, let’s just go.
[00:03:55.510] – Adam Springer
On to the next question then. Done. Next, what else? Well, no, I could go for the easy answer and say AI, but I think AI is… Well, the tech itself is absolutely phenomenal and amazing, but I think it’s overhyped for what it’s doing at this stage in sales. It helps a lot on the back end for research and preparing stuff, but actually for day-to-day and actually execution, it’s not very good yet. Besides that, all the hypes that I see coming and going, it’s like a cycle. Today it’s cold calls, tomorrow it’s LinkedIn, the next day it’s email. All these things are always going around in a circle. At the end of the day, sales is sales. It’s still psychology. You’re dealing human-to-human interactions.
[00:04:48.030] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve been thinking about this, I’ve been thinking about our chat. I think one of the things I just wanted to see if you think I might be on the right track here, I think it’s getting people… It’s always been the case, but it’s getting the right message, but getting in front and getting that moment of attention on what your product serve is to the right target audience, but breaking into their consciousness. I think there’s so much activity, so much content, so much out there that just getting in front of them is the key. But am I on the right track at all?
[00:05:32.860] – Adam Springer
I would say yes, with a major and a very important addition. If you have the best messaging in the world, but it’s not in front of them, then obviously it’s going to go nowhere. But the messaging has to be key, and the messaging, you started talking about it, and it has to be where… It’s not messaging about the features you have or what it is that you’re doing. It needs to be about what problem your prospect has and how you’re solving it. Or not even how you’re solving it, but how it could be solved and what it means for them. I’ll give you an example. It’s like if you’re a consultant or a service company or you have a tool that saves your person 10 hours a week, their problem is they’re having to manually input data into an Excel file and you do it for them. You need to talk about that like, Hey, what would it mean if you could save those 10 hours every week? This is what we do for you. Is it worth a chat? Something along those lines.
[00:06:37.320] – Jonathan Denwood
Right, I get the right track. To get round it, you don’t think fundamentally when it comes to a coherent sales strategy and practices to business to business, that fundamentally things in the last couple of years have changed at all, really?
[00:06:59.690] – Adam Springer
People think that it’s changed, but no, I’ve been doing this. I’ve been doing B2B tech sales in some form or another for the last 16 years, 15 years, and nothing’s really changed in the way that I do it in my methodology.
[00:07:14.180] – Jonathan Denwood
Right, let’s go on to the next question. What’s a couple of things? There’s a couple of things people can say to me that I just start grating my teeth. I keep a poker face, keep it professionally, but there’s a couple of things people can say and there’s a couple of mistakes that I see regularly clients make. It almost happens almost every time. Not every time, but almost. When it comes to sales, are there a couple of fundamental mistakes that you see almost everybody that comes to consult with you or hire you or seek some advice from you that they are regularly doing, which you feel you just wonder, why are they making that mistake? I know why.
[00:08:10.080] – Adam Springer
They’re making the mistakes because they don’t know better.
[00:08:14.100] – Jonathan Denwood
The thing is, there’s a lot of them that can listen to your podcast. There’s a lot of information out there. You can do a Google search, but you still see the same mistakes, don’t you?
[00:08:27.870] – Adam Springer
Yeah, over and over and over again. I think the reason has to do with a few things: confidence and actually to be able to have the volume of people to talk to or the practice to go through the things that you learn so that you could actually implement it. That’s the mistake to answer your question is… Yeah, I see a lot of mistakes and I guess we need to define the question better. Is it in the outreach part or is it in the actual, Okay, got a prospect that wants to talk and is it during that section? What were you thinking there?
[00:09:06.550] – Jonathan Denwood
Which area do you think is the most important? Let’s concentrate on that.
[00:09:13.540] – Adam Springer
I think probably the beginning stage, because then if you’ve got enough people coming through your pipeline, then you throw enough spaghetti on the wall, something will stick. I think the biggest mistake people make when trying to fill their funnel is not filling their funnel. Thinking that, Oh, okay, I’ll build a great product, or I’ve got the best service, I’m going to build an amazing website and the people will come. While an important website is important, but you need to drive traffic to it. You need to.
[00:09:48.390] – Jonathan Denwood
Go out there and- Nobody’s coming, are they?
[00:09:51.360] – Adam Springer
Exactly. That’s the number one mistake is that. But I think once you actually do that, let’s say you’re going to go outbound with LinkedIn messaging or emails or even phone calls. Nobody cares about you. They don’t care about your experience. They don’t care about your company. They don’t care about who you are, where you’re from, what features you’ve just adopted. They don’t care.
[00:10:15.930] – Jonathan Denwood
You make me feel very sad, Adam. Don’t be sad. I don’t know.
[00:10:19.070] – Adam Springer
Well, the truth hurts sometimes.
[00:10:25.520] – Jonathan Denwood
Sorry, I interrupted.
[00:10:26.930] – Adam Springer
I’m sorry, I’m the two of you.
[00:10:29.650] – Jonathan Denwood
I will shut up now, I don’t know.
[00:10:33.950] – Adam Springer
It’s good. I think that that’s the biggest problem is you stop talking about yourself. Nobody cares. Think about things that you have gotten and bought before. You don’t really care how people do it. You care that it gets done and that it gets done in obviously a professional manner and represents you well, but you care that the end result is fixing the problem that you had. How you do it or what differentiates you, that’s more of a technicality and it’s less important. Back to the problem is when people focus on themselves, how to fix that is don’t focus on yourself, don’t focus on your features. Talk about the problem that the prospects have and how you solve it.
[00:11:23.880] – Jonathan Denwood
I think there’s a couple of people in the WordPress space that I’ve always admired because I think they really understand their customers and their business. One of them is Divvy. They are a well-known page builder and they provide a library of themes and the founder and his team. They really understand their customer base. Another individual that really understands his customers is Adam Prazia. He’s got a very popular, one of the largest YouTube channels that are focused around WordPress and WordPress professionals. He understands his target audience enormously well. I think it’s linked to what you said. The other thing I’ve noticed, don’t want me to put to you, is I call it the buyer’s journey. I think people are doing a lot of more research if they’re really interested. I think they’re at different stages of purchasing and those stages really depend on the price point also. First of all, would you agree with that? And is it something you’ve been thinking out? And maybe you could flesh out what you see as the buyer’s journey and how that affects, depending on price point. I mean.
[00:13:02.230] – Adam Springer
That’s a whole long conversation that could go down into many.
[00:13:06.100] – Jonathan Denwood
Different avenues. Well, we got a good 15 minutes before I go for a break, Adam, so go at it.
[00:13:11.840] – Adam Springer
I think in general, yes, the buyer journey is always something that you need to know and be aware of. I think, as you said, there’s people that really know who their audience is, who their ICP is. I think that’s a really important exercise for everybody to be doing first and understanding that there could be multiple ICPs. Sometimes you’re talking to the CEO of a company, sometimes you’re talking to the chief marketing officer of a company. Now, those people, while they may have the same problems, it will affect them differently. For example, a CEO cares more about the financial side, but the CMO or the marketing officer cares more about the emotional side because his job is on the line. Also, they’ll care a bit about money and their budget, but it depends on the size of the company. You need to really understand your client before you could start looking at the buyer journey. But then let’s say, okay, you know your client, look at the buyer journey. As you said, Jonathan, it’s really true. People are now going online. They’re getting all the answers before they come and talk to you. By the time they’re ready to come talk to you, what they’re actually ready to do is understand how it will work specifically for them and maybe for their tech stack.
[00:14:30.170] – Adam Springer
That’s what they want to know. Now they know the gist of what you do. They know high level about what you do, what the market does, what your competitors are doing. But now they want to know specifically about you and how it will work with them. That’s a good thing because now your job is less to educate them, but it’s more to help them understand if it’s a good fit for them, but at the same time, if it’s a good fit for you. I think this is a major thing. We’re getting away from the biojourney, so I apologize for that, but…
[00:15:04.590] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, James, I just go on a wander on these conversations.
[00:15:10.200] – Adam Springer
Normally I hold full-day workshops and stuff like that and multi-day workshops, so I go off into every direction.
[00:15:17.520] – Jonathan Denwood
But the purpose of this conversation is just to give a glimpse so people can’t go to your website and find out more about you, Adam.
[00:15:26.630] – Adam Springer
There we go. Anyways, the… I forgot all my train of thought.
[00:15:34.390] – Jonathan Denwood
No, sorry. You were saying that it’s the buyer’s journey, basically, and it was linked to-.
[00:15:43.140] – Adam Springer
The The sales process, a lot of people think that sales or their conception of sales is like, I got to convince them that I’m the right person for them or that we’re the right company, we’re the right product for them. That’s the wrong way to look at it. You need to look at yourself as equals. This is really important. You are not below the prospect and you don’t need to beg them for anything. You’re the same level and you’re going to help them solve a problem. This is a reoccurring theme throughout all of our conversation, but you’re going to help them solve a problem and they’re going to help you solve a problem. Your problem is there’s not enough money in the bank account. They help you by transferring money over. You help them by doing whatever it is your service or tool provides.
[00:16:29.540] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, that’s how it should be. Let’s go on before we go for a break. Let’s talk about AI. We’ve got to do it. In some ways, I’m sick and tired of it already. I think it’s fabulous technology. I think it’s going to dominate the next decade-plus. I think it’s going to have a similar journey as the internet. I’ve overblown, might lead to inflation, blah, blah, blah. But at the core, I think it’s relevant. One of the things that struck me, and it’s around the buyer’s journey, people said it was going to replace Search straight away. It’s going to do this, do that, do the other. What came to me is that to utilize it for research, you’ve got to know the right questions to ask the prompt. If you don’t ask, it’s pretty obvious, but I’m struck that the obvious sometimes isn’t that obvious. But a lot of people, they don’t even know the right questions to ask because that’s why they end up… If you ever got a big purchase or you’re buying something, a big ticket item or a medium ticket item for yourself or for your business, that’s why you end up hours on the internet because you’ve got to do a big dive to find the questions that are important to ask.
[00:18:03.880] – Jonathan Denwood
What do you think about where I’m going with this, Adam?
[00:18:07.930] – Adam Springer
I couldn’t agree more. I think it’s really important to… The AI is only as good as the… Just like any computer, it’s only as good as the operator. The calculator itself is an amazing tool. That’s not AI or anything. But if you don’t know what numbers are put in, if you don’t know what the multiplication symbol means, then it’s a useless piece of equipment. It’s the same as what you’re saying. If you don’t know what questions to ask AI, it doesn’t really help. Not only that, I think people are looking at AI as a quick fix or an easy way out of getting a job done. I think that’s anything but. When I’m writing content, for example, for my outreach for my clients, I’ve tried several times using AI tools. There’s a million of them out there that will say that they’re going to write you the best email outreach combination. It’s garbage. It’s not good at all. I’ve even tested it, even looking at it thinking it’s garbage, but I thought, Okay, maybe I’m wrong and let’s run a few emails and emails and see if it works and it doesn’t. But where it does come into play, for example, for email outreach is if you’re familiar with the term spintax, what that does is it allows you to write one email.
[00:19:29.780] – Adam Springer
Let’s say you have one sentence of 10 words, you could actually add spin text to it, which will allow it to rotate words. If you say weave, W-E, epostrophy, V-E, or you could have it spin to say either we’ve or we have. That’s the simplest example, but you could expand on that. Can I send you more information? You could say that, May I send you information? Or will it be okay if I send you more information? Then what that’s doing is adding many different variations. For cold email, it really helps reduce the spam filter. Anyways, AI is really good for this because what you could do is you write that one sentence and then you ask ChatGPT, Hey, add Spintext for this. Then that gives you a whole bunch of different ways to spin that. Then that will save you time and effort there.
[00:20:26.750] – Jonathan Denwood
That sounds fantastic. Are there any other tools in the AR space around that you’ve been utilizing, testing that you think are reasonably useful?
[00:20:40.670] – Adam Springer
Not really. I’ve tested a few. There’s some that will read a person’s LinkedIn profile and then allow it to write a one or two sentence connection request. Each one is unique, which is really nice, but comes across as really fake. It doesn’t come across as… Even if you give it the right prompts to be professional or to be witty or to be whatever way you want it to be, it still doesn’t come across as human. That’s the biggest thing. Ai is missing that human touch.
[00:21:19.740] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve been testing two tools in the same area, actually. I haven’t pulled the trigger yet, but I’m near to it. Now what they both do, Adam, is it’s LinkedIn outreach, which is one of the most abused and destroyed mediums ever known to bad. Most people, the outreach to me through LinkedIn are appalling. I mean, truly terrible.
[00:21:49.070] – Adam Springer
They’re probably using AI.
[00:21:51.410] – Jonathan Denwood
I don’t know. It’s just the whole way they’re outreaching the whole way. But this tool basically allows you to send out a video, but it will change the first name and lip-sync it. You have a central email, but it customizes it a little bit. You’re the first name of the person that you’re sending the message, but it sends a video message to them. I think obviously you’ve got to identify the right individuals and send them the right message. But I think that’s quite cool. But in general, before we go to our break, first of all, would you agree with what I’ve just said about LinkedIn? Have you got any tips, tricks about how you think LinkedIn can be utilized more effectively? Because I really like LinkedIn in some ways, but I just think it’s an abused child of the internet.
[00:22:56.650] – Adam Springer
Everything gets abused. Anything that’s gets abused. I’m getting tremendous success from LinkedIn. I’ll give you high-level numbers. Let’s say you send 100 connection requests a week from one account, your connection rate should be anywhere between 30-40%. Let’s just say you get 30 people connecting with you from those 100, then you should, or I’m getting anyways, if you have the right messaging, anywhere from 15 on the low end to 25% response rate. Let’s just call it 20. You’re getting six conversations started each week off of one account. That’s with really safe numbers. Of those you could get 10, 20% are positive. You’re adding one or two people in your sales funnel every week just from LinkedIn and it works phenomenal. Now then you start to scale it and use five LinkedIn accounts and use automation for that. That’s really powerful. I agree with you that most of the LinkedIn outreach sucks and is horrible.
[00:24:08.690] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m pretty open about joining people. You’d be connecting to people that are obviously in sales. But then what I find it has to be really, really bad for me to block them. But there’s been some that have been so outrageous. What I mean is they message bomb you. It’s like a torrent, Adam. It’s like the dam’s busted. Obviously, I just don’t think sending three or four messages straight off to you works anyway, but we’re talking about 20. They don’t back off at all, even though you don’t even answer. I just think, What do you think you’re doing?
[00:24:57.810] – Adam Springer
You’re just peeing. Have you read your own message? I mean, come on, really, read this. It’s awful.
[00:25:04.520] – Jonathan Denwood
What’s your reaction? Am I just a miserable old English geyser or do you think I’m on the right track there?
[00:25:12.580] – Adam Springer
I completely agree with that. I think in order for you to be successful… This goes back to what you were saying, it’s overused and people here, well, LinkedIn is successful, so they don’t want to put the effort in to learn, and rightfully so, a lot of times, most people, probably a lot of the audience is listening, has a business to run and they’re busy. They think, Okay, LinkedIn works. I heard it works. I’m going to just quickly buy a tool for $100 a month and I’m going to put some automation together. But like anything in life, you get what you put into it. You really have to learn LinkedIn. You really have to learn your audience and create good messaging in order to get it to work.
[00:25:57.370] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m just actually talking to me, I think maybe this strategy works a bit better. I’ve not done this myself, I’m just thinking about… Because in some ways I really love LinkedIn, but maybe I’ve been a little bit dismissive about it and what your words of wisdom has rekindled my interest. But maybe doing more outreach, connecting, but then allowing your content. I think you’ve got to publish on LinkedIn relevant content really similar to a blog strategy. You’ve got to put in and it’s got to be target to those that you’re doing your outreach. Then work sub-splitting those people that have contacted you into Pacific groups, and there’s probably tools out there that allow you, and then sending out Pacific content that might be interested to these subcategories. What I’ve just outlined, do you think that’s more on track on a more realistic LinkedIn strategy?
[00:27:07.740] – Adam Springer
Yes, and here’s why. You are a LinkedIn user. Think about what happens when somebody sends you a message that’s not full of shit and spammy, you’re going to look at their profile. It’s your website like, Oh, this person, let’s see who this person is. You immediately click on their profile and then in there you can see what content are they putting out. Are they even a little bit relevant? You don’t have to be overwhelmed and put out new content every day. You can even do it once every two weeks, once every month. That’s okay. But yes, you do have to be putting out something. You do have to be engaging with the community. If you’re going to be reaching out to people, don’t just reach out and then, as you said, get five messages in the next three days from that person. Reach out to the person, connect. Tell them thank you for connecting and that you’d like to stay in touch. Go and comment on one of their posts. Then, hey, go like another post. Then send them a message with some relevant information. Now, this could all be automated. Secret out there that could all be automated.
[00:28:12.920] – Adam Springer
But if you’re not going to put the good automation to use, then you’re not going to get anything out of it.
[00:28:19.360] – Jonathan Denwood
Right. We’ve had a good chat, folks. I’ve stopped barging in when the add-ons were in mid-fall. I’m terrible, I tried. But we’re going to go for our mid-break, folks, and we will be back in a few moments.
[00:28:37.420] – Adam Springer
This podcast episode is brought to you by Lifter LMS, the leading learning management system solution for WordPress. If you or your client are creating any online course, training-based, membership website, or any type of eLearning project, Lifter LMS is the most secure, stable.
[00:29:00.040] – Jonathan Denwood
Well-supported.
[00:29:01.780] – Adam Springer
Solution on the market. Go to LifterLMS. Com and save 20 % at checkout with coupon code, podcast 20. That’s podcast two zero. Enjoy the rest of your show.
[00:29:15.200] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re coming back, folks. I just want to point out, if you’re looking for a WordPress partner, a hosting partner, and much more, somebody that can help you when you get stuck with a job and you just don’t, you’ve got an urgent problem and you’ve got a client really screaming at you, you need a partner that can help you fix that problem and also provide a great hosting experience for your client. If you’re really looking for that, and you should, why don’t you have a look at WP Tonic? We are a hosting provider, but we are much, much more than that. To find out more details, all you have to do is go over to wp-tonic. Com/partners, and why don’t you have a chat with me and we can see if we’re a good fit? I’m sure you’re going to be really joyous that you decided to become a partner with us. On we go with this fantastic discussion about all things business to business sales with a true expert on the subject that has a really great podcast, the Startup for Sales Podcast, which I listen to and I think you should listen to, so go up there and sign up for that.
[00:30:36.950] – Jonathan Denwood
On we go, Adam. What are some of the biggest surprises that come on your radar when it comes to business to business? I don’t know how many years you’ve been doing this. You look very young and relaxed, Adam. It’s hard to judge.
[00:30:55.880] – Adam Springer
I think I’m 40 next year, so I’ve been working since I was 16, 15.
[00:31:05.190] – Jonathan Denwood
Wow! All right, there we go. What’s some of the biggest surprises on this winding journey that you’ve learned around business to business? We’ve all got these… We have this structure how we feel the world works, doesn’t it? That’s called personality. That’s our psyche, how things work. Some of us never learn. Some of us become old idiot because we’re a young idiot. We don’t learn anything from life. What have you, a couple of things you’ve learned about sales that you didn’t think that you’ve learned through all the years you’ve been doing it?
[00:31:54.690] – Adam Springer
Well, there’s a lot there, and that’s a really good question. I’ve got one rant, but I’ll save that to the end.
[00:32:01.780] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, yes. Yeah, we love rants.
[00:32:03.690] – Adam Springer
I think one of the things I’ve learned is not to take it personally, sales. Because if you don’t take it personally, because first of all, it’s not personal. Everybody’s just business most of the time. If it is personal on the other person’s end, then who cares anyways. But if you don’t take it personally, then you could look at it objectively. You could look at it after the fact if you lose a deal and look at it objectively, take your ego out of it and say, What happened? What could I have done better? Don’t put the blame on the other person, even if it’s all them and they’re stupid. A lot of times they are. But what could you have done better? Maybe you could have explained something in a better way so that they understood it in a better way. Only when you can replay the events objectively can you improve your sales skills and then get better. Now for the rant.
[00:33:02.950] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ll just give you some feedback. Because I do almost all the sales calls. There’s two companies that I run, Adam, and both of them, I produce a lot of content for both, but I also do the one-to-one sales calls. I don’t take everyone because sometimes I have to have one of my team take them. But I try and take most of them if I can, because they’re invaluable, even if they fail. A lot some of them will do because you’re not a good fit. They’re not a good fit for you. But even the ones that fail and you’re a bit frustrated at the end of the call, you need to look at them because.
[00:33:51.150] – Adam Springer
All.
[00:33:52.460] – Jonathan Denwood
The info that you need to improve next time is right in front of you. If you’re prepared to have an honest look at it, it’s not secret. It’s all out there. I feel that the product… You didn’t explain the thing coherently. You rambling off, you introduced something that was going to confuse things. There’s a host of things to learn. What do you think?
[00:34:17.540] – Adam Springer
Yeah, you should be recording all of your calls so that you can go back and see those rants or that you’re confused by giving too much information. I think that’s really important. Another thing that I’ve learned, I’ll go backwards a little bit here, is ask the stupid questions. Don’t be afraid to be the stupid guy in the room. Because only when you’re really curious and you ask the basic core questions can you get really good answers from the prospect? I’ve built different sales teams and I always have them, if I’m going to come onto a call with a major prospect that they want my help on or if it’s for training purposes, I always ask them not to introduce me as the VP, sales, or their manager, or anything like that. I ask them to introduce me as a trainee. Then that way, I come in and I could just really ask stupid questions, things that you would think is just really ridiculous. But then the prospect wants to help you, so they answer it as best as they can. Then what that allows you to do is have a really just real good understanding of your prospect and it allows them to spill their guts and explain everything in a really nice and easy way and allow you to understand their pain and their problem so that you could help them solve it.
[00:35:42.990] – Jonathan Denwood
I think it’s really interested in what you’ve just said there because it applies to… Like WPtonic, we build membership and training websites on WordPress and we host them and we support clientele and freelancers and WordPress professionals. But I think a lot of people are building a course for understandable reasons, Adam, they want to build out what I call war and peace. They want to put the kitchen sink in their first course because they think that will produce value. But the problem with the expert, and I have to deal with which now has relevance to what you just said, is that they tend toThey tend to use very industry language and they want to go really into the weeds, which is part of building what I call the war and peace course. They forget that they’re dealing with newbies, with people on the journey, as I say. They need to utilize the right language and they need to provide a solution quickly, a victory, initial victory, but they need to put themselves into the… As the newbie in a way, and I think that’s what you’re saying about sales. You need to put yourself in the mind of the buyer.
[00:37:09.990] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, absolutely. Am I right about that?
[00:37:12.200] – Adam Springer
Yeah, you need to speak at a fifth grade level, I think the science shows. They’ve done a lot of research into this is that the lower grade level you speak and the vocabulary that you speak, the higher chances of closing the deal. There’s a company, Gong. Io, that they record all the calls and they do a lot of AI machine learning onto the data, the transcripts. They’re looking also at how does the deal progress as well. Not just what has been said, it’s how does it progress. They’ve done a lot. They’ve got millions of hours and they see that the lower level you speak, the higher chance you’ll close that deal to a significant amount.
[00:37:58.420] – Jonathan Denwood
They said it’s hope for me, Adam.
[00:38:01.400] – Adam Springer
That’s the only way I’m closing deals. You and I both.
[00:38:09.000] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve definitely got the sharpest thought in my mind. Definitely. Now, we’ve got a lot of WordPress entrepreneurs listening to this podcast and the SAS entrepreneurs. Let’s say you’ve got a company in the six figures and you wanted to get it into the seven figures, Adam. Obviously, I’m just asking you to give a broad what are some of the strategies that you could give more advice that you’ve seen people… Because I would imagine that this is a clientele base that you deal with regularly, those that are in the six figures that want to get into the seven. Plus, what are some of the strategies that can work broadly to get from the six to the seven?
[00:39:05.510] – Adam Springer
First thing is raise your prices. Most of the time, most of the companies I work with, the first thing we do is we just raise the prices. Not because, Hey, let’s just ring up as much as we can. It has a psychological effect as well. Because when you’re a higher price, people think you’re more premium. It’s a subconscious thing. You’re not going to go sell a Ferrari for $20,000. People are going to be like, What’s wrong with it? It’s the same thing. You want to raise your prices. Depending on where you’re at in the market, that’s not an easy thing just to say flat out for everybody. But generally speaking, that’s the first thing I do. But besides that, it’s just keep filling your funnel, like we talked about before. The more people you have it coming into your… Having conversations with every day that may want your service or your business, the better you’re going to be because you’re going to learn more, you’re going to have more conversations, you’re going to get more confident, and you could start selling more just like that. I may be biased in this because I love cold email and I love cold outreach on LinkedIn after we’ve bashed it a little bit.
[00:40:25.960] – Jonathan Denwood
These were- I still think it’s a great medium, I just think a lot of people just abuse it to death. I think there’s great opportunities on LinkedIn. I have hired a couple of people that are subcontractors, and seven years later, they’re still a subcontractor with me. Basically, they came to me at a time where somebody else had let me down and they approached me at the right moment and I tried them out. Seven years later, they’re still with me.
[00:41:04.220] – Adam Springer
Timing is everything. Absolutely. This is what I would say. If you’re running a company with six figures or even five figures, four figures, if you’re just starting. I’ve done this many times, zero to a million in under a year and then going up to 10, 20 million from there. More people in your pipeline, it solves everything. Other than.
[00:41:30.400] – Jonathan Denwood
The PIP and others like that. Obviously, I’m going to ask you the obvious question there, because you’ve opened the gates there. Rather than how do you get more people with you at six figures? You want to get the seven. You’re looking at increasing your prices, but you want to get more people into your pipeline. Can you give a broad outline of what you would quickly say to somebody that’s in that initial consultation that you give them some quick ideas?
[00:42:01.980] – Adam Springer
Let’s just give them the full palette here so that they could take from this episode and do it themselves. If you need help, contact me. But if no, do it yourself. It’s not hard. First of all, as we’ve been saying before, get your message in right, talk about their pain and solving that problem, rather than that. Have a call to action that is not, Hey, book a meeting with me. It’s, Hey, can I send you more information about how we do this? Or, Is this of interest to you? Do baby steps in the messaging, whether that’s on LinkedIn or email. Keep the email short, maybe three sentences. Don’t put your title, don’t put your signature, just your first name in there. Talk like you know this person and you have a relationship with them. Hey, John, I was looking at this. What do you think? Can I send you more information? Done. Things like that. Then for cold email, you’re going to want to… Where most people fail is they’ll test out 100 emails, 200 emails, and then they’ll call it quits. Oh, this isn’t working for me. You need to send thousands of emails.
[00:43:12.730] – Adam Springer
In order to do it properly, you need to have lots of different email accounts because you should be sending no more than 30 emails per email account and no more than three emails per domain. Then you want to be able to rotate those in one campaign. There’s a lot of different tools to do that to help you with that. But that’s what you want to do is be sending from a lot of different emails, a lot of different domains, have messaging that is short, sweet to the point about the problem that they have and that you could solve it and ask for permission for the next step. Not for the step that you want, but for the natural next step, which is, Can I send you more information or is this relevant for you X, Y, Z? Does that answer the question of does that get it?
[00:44:05.010] – Jonathan Denwood
I think you’ve given a good outline there. Hopefully, would I be correct that some of these email tools and other things that we’ve discussed, you have some of that on your website?
[00:44:18.760] – Adam Springer
Would that be fair? I don’t have them on my website, but everybody that’s listening can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I’ll be happy to give you a list of all the tools that I use and I recommend.
[00:44:28.340] – Jonathan Denwood
You’ll be getting an e-mail from me, Adam, so there you go. There we go. Maybe you could share some of those and I’ll make sure they’re on the show notes, Adam. Let’s go on. What are some of the influences? People online books, general stuff. It doesn’t have to be solely around sales. You watch a video, read a book, listen to a podcast, that’s really stuck in your mind that’s really influenced you or moved you in a slightly different direction when it comes to business or attitude in general, Adam?
[00:45:06.370] – Adam Springer
Before I answer that, can I go back to the rant that I wanted to do?
[00:45:10.370] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, please, yeah. We missed the.
[00:45:12.050] – Adam Springer
Rant, didn’t we? We missed the rant. One of my pet peeves is, especially with LinkedIn and social media in general, is you get all these so-called experts and it is really upsetting me. I say this, but I also go put content out. But I’m thinking even about just stopping putting big content out on LinkedIn as far as like post and stuff and trying to make be one of the voices there, just continue with my podcast and then continue going to speaking engagements. Because there’s so many people out there that are giving advice and they’re really good at marketing and they’ve got that really great personality. I’m very introverted. I prefer to be shy and quiet in my room. I don’t want to talk highly about myself or pat myself on the back every two minutes. But those are the people that are really succeeding in the game of getting a lot of content, a lot of voices and tens of thousands of followers, generally speaking. My pet peeve is these people, while their success may be valid, it’s not for everybody and it’s not right for you. You got to take into account their experience is, who their audience is, and where that advice is coming from before listening to it.
[00:46:36.620] – Adam Springer
Now that includes me. A lot of people listening here should not listen to me. If you’re B2C, I have no idea what I’m talking about when it comes to helping you. I’m sorry. There’s other industries as well within the B2B world. But this is what’s really important and this is one of my pet peeves and that’s my rant.
[00:46:55.460] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, yeah, we live in the age of the influencer, don’t we? —for whatever that means. But on the other hand, but also obviously there is a divergence between business to business and business consumer. But in some ways I think they have merged as well. There’s bit of cross-fertilisation. Obviously, they are depending on the.
[00:47:20.760] – Adam Springer
Ticket price. Absolutely. There’s similarities in everything we do. At the end of the day, B2B is still a person on the other end that you’re dealing with. As I said before, it’s sales and psychology. B2b, B2C, very similar.
[00:47:37.690] – Jonathan Denwood
There’s a lot of case studies and podcast conversations I’ve listened to that a product, an initial product’s been entered in the company because they’ve aimed at the developer, and they’ve aimed at a price point, which they know that the developer doesn’t have to get permission from their supervisors to buy that subscription level and they’ve used it. Then gradually, more the developers, more of the customer user base have utilized it, and then they’ve gone up and spoken to higher levels in the company. There’s a lot of that around, isn’t it? Those types of- It’s a great.
[00:48:22.160] – Adam Springer
Business.
[00:48:22.520] – Jonathan Denwood
Model. Yeah. There’s a lot of that around there. Let’s get back to the question. Are there any influences, people that you’ve read their book or you follow them even like you started following them seven years ago and you’re still following them now that you’d like to share with the audience?
[00:48:40.630] – Adam Springer
There’s two. Let me just look her up because I don’t remember her full, her last name, but I just had her on my podcast and I was actually very impressed with what she had to say and her approach. But anyway, so before I give you those two names, I think it’s important when you’re looking for people to get advice from and to learn from, look in every corner. If you’re looking for B2B sales, don’t just go look for B2B sales. If you’re looking for WordPress, don’t just go look at WordPress. There’s people in other industries that you may think is completely irrelevant that you’ll learn a lot from. The one person I’ve learned so much from is actually a logo designer. He’s expanded a bit since then, and he’s very big and very popular. But I’ve learned so much from him. His name is Chris Dewe, D-O. Wow, he’s phenomenal. You can watch him on YouTube. I think he has a podcast as well and a book. Amazing, highly recommended for.
[00:49:46.540] – Jonathan Denwood
Any- Great guy. I’ve been following him for years.
[00:49:49.850] – Adam Springer
Yeah, you know him too. He’s an incredible guy. The other one-.
[00:49:54.060] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve been trying to get him on the podcast, but he’s avoided it. I always have him on the phone with me on a phone all the time. I’m just trying to get my eyes to him regularly.
[00:50:02.970] – Adam Springer
Well, Chris, if you’re listening, both of us want you on our podcast. The other one that I had on my podcast, she’s from London. Her name is Bethany, but she goes by Beth, Ears, A-Y-E-R-S. She’s the co-host of also a podcast called The Operations Room. Really smart, really knows what she’s talking about. If you’re looking to grow your business, to scale your business, and work with the board and with your sales and how to grow that whole business side of the business instead of product, listen to her as well.
[00:50:39.700] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. Last question. My fun question. Obviously, I’m English. I live in America, Adam, on the West Coast.
[00:50:49.910] – Adam Springer
I live in- Nobody’s perfect.
[00:50:51.470] – Jonathan Denwood
No, there we go. I love England, but I just couldn’t put up with the rain anymore. I’m English. As a kid, I was an avid watcher of Doctor Who and The TARDIS, the time machine. If you had your own time machine and you could go back to the early part of your career, is there one or two things you love to say to yourself, if you could advise yourself, if you could go back and just give a couple of little tips to yourself, what would they be, Aidan?
[00:51:28.580] – Adam Springer
I think I learned about halfway through my career, and I wish I learned it more earlier. Don’t focus so much on finding the right path. Just go and do and act. If you get fired from the job, who cares? If you’re getting in a fight, don’t stress over it. If you need to leave your job because you’re unhappy, leave it. Don’t worry about it. You’re not the first person. You’re not the last person to go through that scenario. I found that as long as you keep learning, you’re going to go up anyways. Don’t let it stop you. Don’t be afraid of it and enjoy the ride.
[00:52:09.240] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes, certainly a ride life. But what do you learn? That’s all that matters. Adam, what’s the best way for people to find out more about your wisdom and your knowledge? What’s the best resources to find out more about you, Adam?
[00:52:27.080] – Adam Springer
Could always go to startupsales. Io. That’s the best way to find me. Also, we’re on LinkedIn, Adam Springer. My podcast is startup sales, so you can find that on anywhere. But yeah, those are the three channels.
[00:52:43.670] – Jonathan Denwood
Like I said, folks, I listen to Adam’s podcast. It’s a great podcast. Definitely sign up for that. Also, join us on Facebook. I’ve got a great Facebook group. It’s the WP Tonic and the membership machine show my other podcast. We have a great Facebook group there. Look it up, join us there. We’ve got a great community there, great tribes, so book that. We will be back next week. I’ve got to say, we’ve got some fantastic guests in September and October, I’m fully booked up. I’m really looking like this conversation, really looking forward to some of the conversations. We will be back next week, folks. See you soon. Bye.
[00:53:25.750] – Adam Springer
Hey, thanks for listening.
[00:53:27.180] – Jonathan Denwood
We really do.
[00:53:27.880] – Adam Springer
Appreciate it. Why not visit the Mastermind Facebook group and also to keep up with the latest news, click w-tonic. Com/news letter. We’ll see you next time.
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Membership Mastermind
#1 – Adam, What are some leading trends you have observed in B2B lead generation over the last few years?
#2 – What are a couple of fundamental mistakes you see startups making when it comes to B2B lead generation?
#3 – How does AI affect or change B2B lead generation over the next few years?
#4 – What has been one of the biggest surprises that come on your radar connected to B2B lead generation this year?
#5 – What have been some of the biggest online influences or personal mentors connected to your business career development?
#6 – If you return to a time machine at the beginning of your career, what essential advice would you give yourself?
