THE INSIGHT

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What’s the one marketing trend that you wholeheartedly disagree with?

I see people talking about PLG all the time.

And it sounds so enticing people who have developed a product, it sounds great if you can just make the product good enough, then people just want to buy it right. And there’s, there’s a few examples of companies who have done this successfully like Slack.

Well, the problem is that those are very, very thin, limited examples of stuff where it’s been successful. And the vast majority of companies who have tried this have failed, it’s really, really hard.

And it’s kind of a wake up call.

Product led growth doesn’t work on its own, you have to get out there, you have to get in front of your customers, you have to get in front of your market, you have to speak to some of your best fit potential customers.

And in many cases, depending on your price point, if it’s over $100 or 100, Euro monthly, you have to talk with them and close them in a demo or a sales call.

Most people are not going to just click around and buy a 500 or $1,000 a month product just on a whim, you have to actually talk to those people and make things happen.

So PLG on its own does not work.

Sure, make your product great, make it awesome.

But really, you need a sales process to actually drive revenue.

If you could talk to all B2B revenue leaders in the world for 1 minute, what would you say?

Stop focusing around all of the big sales and the polish and all the numbers and checking your CRM and sell, sell, sell, sell, sell and getting your team to sell, sell, sell.

We need to shift our mindset.

We need to start thinking about how can we help?

And when you start thinking about how can I help this person in front of me, they’re obviously struggling, they’ve got challenges, they’ve got goals, they’re trying to get to let me help them and not sell them

Too many times when we tell our teams: “Hey, we need to sell we need numbers.”

They’re purely pushing for numbers.

They’re not thinking about how can I help this person.

But when you change how you’re thinking, and you start thinking about I want to help this person, I want to help them overcome these goals or get to these goals, I’m gonna help them overcome the challenges. And how can I best do that.

Now the person on the other side, they don’t feel a salesperson pulling them, they feel a guide and a consultant who’s helping them along. And that is such a much better feeling to a prospect. And that’s why the people who are actually helping sell more.

So it’s kind of counterintuitive, but when you do this, when you help more, you actually sell more so get your teams to start thinking about helping and not sell.

What’s the most important character trait that helps you succeed in your career? Why?

Most importantly for me, the best character trait is persistence.

Too many times I’ve I’ve started something and thought it would be a good tactic thought it would be a good way for us to grow. And then it didn’t work after a couple of weeks. And so I kind of gave up.

I later realised that if I would have just kept at it, that would have worked really well. It just needed time in the oven.

And so a lot of my clients come to me they’re like cold email doesn’t work for us. I’m like, really? How long have you tried it? “Oh, we tried. We sent three emails. And nobody ever bought anything.” Like, really, you sent three emails and it didn’t work. Okay.

So you need to be persistent, you need to start something.

First of all, you want to make sure you’re doing the right thing. So make sure it aligns with your market, make sure it fits with your budget and what your buyers are looking for.

But once you figure that out, usually talking with somebody who’s done it before learning the right formulas.

Once you know it’s right, get at it and push and push and stay consistent, be persistent and don’t give up if it’s the right thing for you right now, keep with it.

For me growing my LinkedIn account for example, the early days nobody was liking anything right if you’re out there trying to build authority and you’re trying to like post all this stuff nobody liked anything eventually started get some likes to get some comments or you get some people to ask me message me message asking questions.

And eventually now it’s turned into 80% plus of our of our source for our clients.

But initially it was rough and if I had given up I don’t know what would have happened.

So be persistent has been awesome for me.