Coronavirus Marketing Series with Sujan Patel

00:00You're listening to the Coronavirus Marketing Series on the Growth Manifesto podcast, a Zoom video series brought to you by Web Profits, where we talk about how to drive marketing and business success through the COVID-19 pandemic. This episode is a discussion with Sujan Patel, co-founder of the US Arm of Web Profits and founder of SaaS companies like Mailshake, Voila Norbert, Right Inbox, Narrow, Link Texting, Pick and Queue. So let's get into it. How are you? Is this your podcast set up?

00:37No, this is just my office set up. And you have a standing desk, I can see. Yeah, I've been sitting all day and I had a fried chicken sandwich for lunch. So I need to get this energy off. Fried chicken sandwich, is that a part of the diet? Is that just... Yeah, it's a quarantine diet. The quarantine diet, yeah. I think I've been having the quarantine diet for the last month, and I've now just started to realize that this thing's going to probably keep going for a little

01:08bit longer. And if I keep doing this diet, it's going to be a very challenging time as soon as the quarantine's lifted. It's like, oh no, I have to go to the gym all the time. Yeah, for sure. like every like every twice a day just to make it up yeah exactly like you know I think actually like just in the last seven days I started to walk twice a day in some of the meetings just so I can start to move and I'm getting my 10,000

01:38steps so that's kind of like a small little hack that I learned last week I'm from someone at the office so how are you going man kind of has everything yeah good um you know um things are kind of stabilized in the sense that like um my day-to-day is a little bit more normal um we've canceled you know we've cut back budget and and kind of adjusted our marketing stuff so it's not as crazy uh busy with new initiatives and

02:10stuff so yeah you know day is surprisingly calm i'm like like ready to do more but i'm like just I need a break because I just came off of, you know, COVID response team of like for six weeks. Well, before we get into that, quick intro. So I'm talking with Sujan Patel. He's a SaaS founder with companies like Mailshake, like Voila Norbert. That's how you say it, right? Voila Norbert? Yeah. Like Right Inbox, like Narrow, Pick, Q, and he's a co-founder of the Web Profits arm in the US.

02:48So welcome. That's the official welcome, Sujan. Good to have you. I was like, I can get Sujan on the podcast. But let's just start with what you just said a second ago. Yes, what was the whole COVID response thing which you did across your SaaS companies? And just to be clear, I'm going to be focusing on the SaaS side of things with you because obviously I'm doing a lot of talking about the agency side of things. And so with this chat, we'll just focus on the SaaS side of things. Yeah? yeah sure so um and in code response i think first and foremost is every company would figure out

03:24like where is the what's happening like who is the customers and what's happening you know we had one company that's like brick and mortar businesses they're shut down like restaurants retail what have you another company that is um right in box like unaffected users i mean there was a handful of users that were affected but a lot of them were like there was a flood of buying so it's kind of the opposite scenario like finally some good news right um mail shake and some others like marketing budgets were cut clients were cut you know um you know stuff like

03:57that so we're trying to figure out like what do we do to like one make this thing predictable and know what's going to happen two like what is happening so we can appropriately adjust not not not necessarily just our offering but like what we can do to save that customer right and then on the flip side what's happening on the marketing and sales front um so that we could better sell and and and market to those customers too so we kind of had to do all of it all at once

04:27so long story short it changed our whole sales process it changed your customer support and customer success process and we kind of made this new rogue team that's like helps specifically with covid uh related people that were helps talk to communicate with people that were affected by covid shutdown um when i say shutdown i mean it's not most people like i don't think i had one person say i got sick for two weeks you know i had people saying my business is screwed because it's closed right now or i lost like 90 percent of my revenue what do i do it's more of those right so it's not

05:01health it's a purely financial yeah so what do we do to save them okay natural thing was like let's give a discount right but like that can get wildly out of control you know um in in in one of our companies um we did a like when you actually check out when you actually go to cancel you get a prompt that says like hey were you affected by covid um like yes i was okay cool we're gonna help we're

05:33going to help secure your, like, you're going to be good. You're not going to pay for why your business is down. That was pretty much the offer. Right. And that saved like a third or half of people. It started with a half and then kind of went down. Um, and then we would manually reach out to all the people who didn't take that offer just, just as a, as a, as a secondary human touch. Um, and we just gave them like in this particular business, it was a lot of brick and mortar. They were, businesses were making zero revenue. So we're like, Hey, look, stay on board and you won't pay while you're down as soon as you come back up you'll pay if it's a month two months

06:07three months six months you won't pay like whatever it is you won't pay um if we do that same thing at mailshake even our best paying customers just take the take us up on an offer it would it would blow up in our face and we would lose our lose so much revenue now i don't say this because like i'm cold-hearted and i want all the money in the world like that'd be nice but like if we lose revenue we lose employees right like yeah i don't want to lose my employees either and then if we lose employees they stop buying stuff and then like it's just like a trickling chain right exactly so how can

06:38my company like help or my companies right so um a little bit of discounting very limited time friends right a lot of understanding a lot of helping people a lot of training uh on remote sales remote selling um the like how to even do a covid related thing just as i'm doing now it's like hey here's what i'm doing here's what i did um some a few free months here and there um lots of case-by-case basis stuff right like 90 of what we did was a case-by-case basis but the team know

07:11how to deal with it because we put a person or two dedicated to that on it and they did to those specific cases no so like our covert related issues were handled by one or two people and they did that every day and that wasn't the only thing they did that was just like they did that in addition to their normal role but then they were better prepped to say okay if this happens this happens and and you know there was some there's a lot of them i wouldn't say a lot but a handful of abuse right like hey my friend got a free month how do i get a free month well

07:44you know somebody's friend got like a year for free right and you know so it's really like we just did it on a case-by-case basis to um to save kind of face um yeah and then we were trying to think of what can we do that are like dead what can we offer that we're not free uh i mean sorry that one didn't cost saving that were free for us but very beneficial so like education right what can we do um so we created a lot on the business i was targeting retailers and restaurants

08:17and you know whatnot we created content on like how business can improve during their downtime like get reviews for your yelp and google maps page get your business listing right like um ask every one of your customers to like post a picture of what they ate like don't ask for a review send the picture do some construction like get your business ops in order right like use zero use you know whatever right so like it's like stuff like that that we did that like it's free for us i mean we just write content all day it's normal business but that one person you know the

08:52five people or whoever you know implemented that when their business comes back it could be you know much better yeah um yeah thanks for sharing um those challenges um because i'm sure they want to hear no no no no like i actually want to hear more i'm going to go into like a lot of them um now as well but i think um there's so many parts to that um let's start by um how kind of intense was that last six weeks in terms because you have a few because you had like a few companies

09:24that you had to kind of kind of like affect that all on at the same time and you had to kind of kind of have a look at all of them right and yes how hard was it like at the time because it's still happening ish but you just said at the beginning it's kind of relaxed yeah if i had any hair i wouldn't have lost at all like it's just like it was um i think on an emotion like so i would say an emotional level hardest physical level second hardest and then like a secondary personal level

09:56very like it's still emotion but like professional uh emotional i'll explain that in a second but on a personal level very difficult because uh we had to make some tough decisions you know a few people did get laid off in the situation and we actually like i didn't i worked really hard to find jobs for people who got laid off um i made intros now i can't make a guarantee right but like i made intros to like a recruiter i made intros to like i sent people like job listings at remote sites like i try to go above and beyond because i thought the people we had the four people we let

10:29go through this whole process which that was that's about like seven six percent of our staff right uh seven percent of our staff so it's it's a statistically it's not that big but like four people's livelihoods were adjusted during a hard time right so um but that part what i actually mean is like my so i was affected by covid too right so like my kids daycare closed so like now i have an 18 month old running around in the background my wife and i were trying to figure out how to work and this is the time i should i have to work like 12 hour days right so like yeah

11:03like so personally i was just destroyed from like the amount of energy expended to just work to show up to work a regular day and then i had the long like long day right and so um yeah i think in an emotional level i would say is like we're gonna lose a lot of money i'm gonna work twice as hard and that's okay right just like i'm completely accepted that like it's gonna be a shitty year but one i feel better because it's going to be shitty for everybody you know like just let's

11:37just erase this from our memories right um it's 2021 is our year you know like in 2019 it was like 2020 is our year and then in january it's like wait 2021 wait 2021 is going to be our year you know yeah yeah so i i think like i don't find solace in like everyone feeling the burn together I just mean like the bar is that everyone feels the pain. And so it's just the new nature. Yeah. And then stomaching the fact that like my businesses that were doubling year over year

12:08are now just going flat or losing a little bit. And that's the best case scenario. And I'm happy about that. Right. And that's with you putting all that time in. Right. That's with you putting everything in for six weeks to just make sure that it stays at that level. And taking pay cuts. like for myself um so like working harder just to work working harder at work getting paid less and then my the roi of me working harder is that we break even at best right yeah so like

12:42yeah to me that's like a punch in the face a punch in the stomach a kick in the nuts all at one time yeah i think what's um what's interesting about that conversation is like like i think you know because i've been like in the same scenario right like what's this been going for six weeks now roughly i don't know it feels like again four years but i think yeah i don't know four to six weeks maybe six weeks five six weeks but um like kind of instantly everyone's on lockdown um kind of the whole world's changed um you're needing to make some huge um huge decisions in

13:22the company now everyone's at home your children are home the workload's completely a little different your partner will have kind of like challenges themselves um you're trying to not get the coronavirus at the same time you're trying to be kind of tactful in terms of actually how you change everything but you still need to change everything and you still need to be aggressive to ensure that at the end of this, you're at the best possible level in a very bad scenario. Right.

13:56And so, yeah, it's so exhausting. Right. And then at the same time, trying to be healthy. I mean, that went out the window for me. Like I was just like, Hey, I'm going to eat chocolate and cereal and pizza. And I went a bit too crazy, which is why like, you know, we're now at the stage where everyone's kind of over lockdown. It's like, okay, well it's going to be life after this. in that first month, I think the like emotional stress would have been really hard for like a lot of people, you know, and like relationships would have been kind of strained sometimes as well,

14:27right? Because like you're just now at home, trying to find a balance, trying to be everything, trying to fit it all in, can't fit it all in. It's not possible, you know, and I think, you know, that's something that I don't think like a lot of people are speaking about, you know just from the professional side of things just kind of that balance you know and i've never been somebody that's been that good a balance anyway but now you're kind of being forced to because now you're just at home there's no place where someone's going to go and have their day at work or you know like you're home and it's like that's what's happening you know and

15:02and then you have to make everything like succeed so that you keep your staff you keep everything going like all the work which you've done over the past five ten fifteen like years is not just gone because of a virus right and i think a lot of pressure a lot of pressure it all happens at one time i think a good a good human like a good capable person could handle maybe three or four of those things like someone x exceptional could handle maybe five or six but like 10 things at one

15:35time which is yeah right and then and this is a healthy person right so it's yeah it's tough right like imagine if you got sick and and side side story here uh my wife is pregnant and so we like she did get sick with with twins yeah i want to know that as well yeah and uh i'll tell you i have a leg and shoulder injury which i was supposed to get surgery on my left leg on my left knee um that anyways um so like i had all like a list of medical issues for my wife and myself and

16:09we ended up having to go to the hospital um she had an issue she's fine um we got to the er we got admitted and um an overzealous doctor's like hey like just because you're pregnant you have this mild fever just double check you got you don't have coronavirus you eligible for a test i'm like no no no they kind of like they twisted around to do it anyways when you say yes to doing a coronavirus test at a hospital you get quarantined inside the hospital so we're like in a hospital room wow a day and a half um so like personal level like i was just done and like i'm 18 month

16:42old so i was trying to like figure life out i felt like i was an 18 year old like graduating college i'm like what do i do now but i had like rent to pay tomorrow but i had no job to pay it was like what do i do right so it's like in my world like coronavirus is like here and then the other shit i'm dealing with is like here right so like but it's stacked together so yeah very hard but uh here i am it's from it's been seven weeks for me um since all this stuff

17:12has happened i have a smile on my face very low stress again um accepting my faith of like the year is going to suck um but and i'm healthy and even if i wasn't you figure out how to get healthy again you know like yeah it's um it's kind of one of those um um challenging um things where and this is something that we were talking about in our marketing as well which is around like you need to be marketing you need to be selling

17:44but you need to be aware that there's a global pandemic going on so you can't be insensitive and so that balance is like super difficult because like i was saying um to somebody um the other day i was like look like i'm trying to um to at the end of this um to be stronger you know like yes that's going to be the hardest thing possible in the world to do but that's still the goal um but the one proviso is that you just don't get coronavirus right like like like it's

18:16So it's so, you know, so focused on the business side of things, but the stories I've heard of the people that actually have had the coronavirus and how it just kind of just knocks you out for a long time. Like, it's scary, right? Like, it's kind of like you just, and you don't know what it is or basically who's got it and kind of how long it's based on some packaging. And so now, you know, they were washing the supermarket stuff because like, I don't know, right? And so, yeah, look, it's challenging.

18:50I think this is the hardest thing I've ever had to deal with, right? Like is this scenario in terms of the business side of things, you know? Yeah. One of the things I find helps motivate me to keep going and like think about the end and past that is like, just think about like a year from now when, let's just say you're 70% recovered from this. Maybe let's just call it two years from now. you're 80% recovered 70% whatever um you're not 100% you're better than you are now but you're

19:21not 100% recovered which is kind of what this story is going to be for most businesses um and then you have a problem to deal with it's like oh I can deal with one problem that's easy I could do it closed I could do it a Saturday morning at 4am it doesn't matter and I could have gone out drinking and I just got home an hour ago like that problem is so easy when you've dealt with 10 at one time. It's not 10, but I would say the financial impact is like a great, is equivalent of five, right? Like it's just like an extreme. So I think this, the grit as an

19:54entrepreneur, as a founder, as a, as a marketing leader, even as a working professional, right? Like even as an intern, like if you can do it here, you can perform it walking with this amount of gravity you can run a marathon in a year and it feels less than walking right so like put in the time it's forced congratulations everybody now has to get a black belt in living and then you move on you know yeah i think that's a super point and that's not something i've actually

20:24considered yet but it's like yeah like this is this is certainly just going to be um a very important experience for everyone that's involved in this at the moment from like work perspective on on kind of like how to step it up and the possibility that it can then that you can operate at this level right like and that like there's a pandemic going on and we can all still come um together through zoom um and slack and asana and all the digital platforms and perform

21:01and perform in an environment that's probably the most challenging well i hope it's going to be the most challenging of my lifetime. Like it has been so far. And so I do think there's some side benefits there, which I kind of hadn't considered. So that's really interesting. You know, I think everyone's just so busy just trying to balance everything, survive, kind of handle the biggest problems. Like, you know, like in interviews, how they say, you know, could you tell me a time where you had to prioritize conflicting challenges? I got you. I got you. Yeah. You know, it's like,

21:35let me tell you the story about the coronavirus pandemic and you know kind of how we had to adapt everything and balance kind of family life and health and this and that you know and i think um it's something which everyone has to deal with but i also think that not everyone is like dealing with it the same way you know i think um some people are stepping up some people are just stuck and they're just kind of they're not sure what to do right like and they haven't pivoted fast enough or adapted fast enough or know how to do it so have you got any advice for them

22:09yeah i mean i think um think about you know if you're in the role you're in the world of like i don't know i can't find my footing you don't need to find don't think about like the next five-year plan right think about like what are you gonna do month one month two month three that's the five-year plan right like month one i'm just gonna like get through my day that's my goal at the end of the month at the end of the week i just want to get through my day without dying right like literally right in some cases i just think like break this down into smaller

22:42chunks and then think about what you're doing in your day in your role in your life that has the biggest like what is it just make a list of everything you have to do and then think about like what's the three or four biggest things you need to do right like i personally hate going to the grocery store but i'm the only one in my family who can do so like i can't have my wife go she's um the most vulnerable can't my one 18 month old he just doesn't know how to shop or talk yet right can't drive a car he's pretty much useless um and and then um and then all the

23:16online places are all broken they're all just like then none of them work or fast enough you know there's only so many bugs so i gotta go right like now you know a month ago two months ago i really hated grocery shopping it was like the worst thing in my list i would i would refuse to go I mean I just better not eat right but like this is my normal like I need food to survive I found 8 a.m is the best place the best time to go so anyways my point being is like figure out what's the most important things for your like your health um you know like so you can't go to

23:48the gym okay take a walk like you were saying you walk twice a day or you walk in your office like take a walk I get more I get about 10,000 steps in too I'm just looking at my step um I don't leave my house most of the time i have bad allergies so leaving my house means i like sneeze and um have all everyone thinks you got coronavirus because you'll sneeze and they're like this guy but sneezing isn't a part of uh sneezing isn't a part of a symptom oh it's a sore throat right sore throat yeah as if you can tell that looks yeah i have a sore throat yeah i gotta look

24:19like i have a sore throat you know anyways um so yeah just think about the big things you've got going on that are important to your living your survival and then think about what's the second challenge is like what can you do to make you happy right so one of the things i do is i take a walk um around i have coffee outside i listen to a podcast for 15 20 minutes like i don't care what's going on that's all i do and it's not a podcast about what crap is going on in the world it's just something i always wanted to do so that's it and i started watching another thing i do is um

24:52like for entertainment during lunch because i'm sitting on my desk at and i don't want to work i you just need to take a break. I watch all the great thing about the internet is that there's everything on there. So I watch on YouTube, all the past conferences I wanted to go to. And I watch, I just look up like X conference and Y topic. So like, I'm watching like a 50 video playlist right now of 50 product management talks, right? Like over the last decade,

25:23um probably like six years now so like that's going to give me like a master's degree in product management now like in my role i do product related work so boom like it correlates right then and now right and it's like you know like i said earlier like when you're done with this a year from now two years from now whatever challenge you come up with it's going to be like like you can run a marathon because you've already walked 50 of them right now right back to back without a break um and so it's like that it's like you've learned all this stuff and it's just

25:54like way easier right so okay and then so from the business perspective like like if somebody's stuck um in terms of business like like what's a good place to start you know like they're like oh so all my business is now you know shrunk um like i've been like in the defense mode trying to cut costs, right? Which is what basically everybody like in the business world has done. And they're not sure what to do next. You know, what would you advise them?

26:26I think the big thing is, what can you do next that can get you out of this hole? What's like, not a long shot. Like I think getting all those long shots, unproven channels you're working on in your marketing makes sense to stop doing now, right? But like if SEO is your bread and butter, you should be doubling down on that. You should be looking at what are trending opportunities what can i do to make my business um not covid proof what happens after covid right like so if you're a restaurant how do you make your business streamlined for

26:59takeout orders because there's going to be mostly that when you come back right or maybe not mostly that when you come back forever but the six months after that it will be right yeah um so i think it's like thinking about like what's next with your business so you have an agency right um what what happens and you lose really don't let's just make an estimate you lost 70 in business well how do you are we going to just gain it back um what's the best structure maybe you should think about what are the most profitable uh marketing channels that we've provided for clients what are the most

27:33um um beneficial for the client like what are like maybe you don't build everything back you usually shouldn't you should build the strong things back and you should think about like what are the things i should be doing that are scalable profitable and beneficial to the you know the customer or whatever um so i think those are kind of some ways i would look at it um maybe you look at like your team and your role at the team right like um i've been through a shitty situation where i had a business i was in the wrong role i was a ceo and really i was long past

28:08that CEO role. And before I was CEO, I was like the head of marketing. And before I was the head of marketing, I was like the SEO manager. And every time I got out of that role, I hired someone better. So, and although I'm saying to spend money in a time where money is tight, maybe you should think about who are the hires you need to have to build the organization that you want to be a part of and what's your role. I learned a long time ago, I probably don't want to be CEO ever again. um it turns out i actually do i just want to have a better leadership team around me um

28:43or you know again like um or these are the things i'm really good at like i really hate the finance part so of the ceo part i need a strong finance person so that they can walk they can talk to me like i'm an eight-year-old when it comes to the finances part right and then turns out i just need to get a little bit better at finances so what are things you can upskill yourself on yeah right yeah right um it's um it's interesting because i think um there's a possibility for

29:16quite a lot of organizations to change what they do it's just really difficult you know and so i think um taking those steps at the same time like like as being kind of like like that's more of an offensive approach yeah like like it's basically you know we're trying to now start to attack um and up to this point you know so we've just been kind of like defending right and so i think um i think what's kind of happening right now is that not everything is going to be the same after this

29:49and i think um the people the companies that put all the effort in now to shift how they sell and to shift what they select, especially if they can sell something right now, they're going to be the ones who come out stronger. I think all the restaurants and stuff, they're going to be okay. If they can survive this, like I can't wait to go back and eat food out again. I can't wait to have some nice wine, a steak, not wash the dishes, you know, have a dessert, have hot chips, have all the different parts, which I just love to have, you know, like

30:22like i used to eat out way too much um and now i've had like a hiatus from that for the last two months almost right and so like i think like on that side of things like all of kind of the food and stuff like that's going to be there you know like like it may change hands because they couldn't afford to last it out but someone else is going to come and i think that whole thing is going to be the same i think anything um which you can sell kind of online or that's a service like especially kind of on the b2b side of things it's all about changing stuff like it like like

30:56it's all about changing stuff now right like it's all about um trying to see actually how you can be relevant and how you can be helpful right now like and if you can shift especially if it's um like a service where it's it's basically staff it's systems and it's basically the company behind that but there's no product like it's not like you know some sass right where you've got the software you can adjust it like a little bit but you can't change the whole thing

31:31overnight but services they can change their service overnight you know and i think there's a lot of companies that are like that um but i digress um you spoke before about like you had to change everything from a customer service perspective but what did you change so um yeah i mean like the like you know for customer service there's probably maybe 10 to 12 percent of issues that come in are related to billing it's inverted right billing became the new like that's the most

32:06common thing and then there's a there was subcategories underneath there right yeah um and and there was just kind of dealing with the unknowns right i allowed you know i kind of empowered the team to say okay if it's under x amount of dollars you make the decision if it's under from x to y two people need to make the decision like two people should look at it and if it's more than y i want to be involved right um so i can take the hit if it's i make the wrong decision and i'm not gonna say it's the right i never have made i've never always made the right

32:39decisions but then at least there's like a triage right so stuff like that now again like the whole process of everything we've had just like broke because if we just kept using that whole process we just said no refunds sorry look at our terms of service or like no no discounts then like our competitors would be eating our lunch right so yeah or like then user loses we lose and and then then what like someone they're going to go somewhere anyways or maybe they go nowhere so they don't do that thing right so um it was that it was thinking about how we can be helpful

33:13right um changing the email copy around or um you know um change again like optimizing certain things or um sending time be different right like so for example you know if you like how many emails you get from ceo is saying like a message from our ceo right guarding covid like how many fake bullshit like like high level fluff did you get right long emails that kind of said nothing right

33:43yeah um so in a world where like now like being in the email space with three companies in the email space um time to send emails you're dealing with a lot of crowded emails right now right um So how do you stand out? It's a little different than it was before, right? Because there's so many COVID related things or so many, like, let's say you're normally used to selling to a certain audience and now they're all working from home and now the stakeholder needs to get the buy-in from,

34:15I mean, the person who's buying it needs to get the, the, the CEO's approval, but like they're, they're all struggling and they're trying to save their business. So like now all of a sudden you're fighting against a more crowded inbox and the people who really don't have as much time and they all are concerned about money. When like price at Mailshake and Right Inbox, we used to always win on price. That was that we were, we were one of the lowest costs in the market for our space. And so pricing wasn't the biggest issue. And now all of a sudden pricing is the issue.

34:46Right. Even if it's not, it's an issue, right. time like people would just go and use the software and now we're like they're like well should we do this right now I don't know like blah blah like like they have to deal with their emotional element as well so it's just like the same stuff we're dealing with our customers are dealing with and so we had to figure out ways to kind of cope with that now I'm not giving specifics because it wasn't a one size fits all and i would say the solution is actually not the

35:20problem like that's not what you think about think about what your customers if you're if you're a service of uh whatever business you are in a sas service whatever um think about what things your customers your buyers your icps or personas whatever you want to call them what they're dealing with like the challenges and their goals are different now and they might be temporary or they might be permanent. The challenges of budget, time, whatever are different, right? So for example, everyone is working remote, where like a lot of our customers we sold to, although we were always

35:55remote, our customers were like, oh, let me go bring my boss, let me go bring this person in, and, but now that person's busy, and they're not even in the same office. And so we, instead of, you know, trying to coordinate that we, at the end of our follow-up, it's like, at the end of our meeting, we do a follow-up that sends people a link to a demo for their boss, right? Or like a two minute version of something, right? Like, so those are ways you can streamline

36:25the process to help get everybody caught up, right? Because to get your boss to come on a meeting with you and then like schedule it out when they're really busy dealing with all this stuff that they've gotten to play, it might be two weeks. And in two weeks, that person might be out business that client might just be gone and then like again well another like less crazy way to look at this would be in two weeks they're not thinking about buying your software anymore they've moved on to 15 other problems you've got to deal with right and so the buyer cycle purchasing cycle change maybe shrunk elongated pause whatever it's it's it's um

37:02it's it's it seems that well i think it is that the sas market is this kind of similar to the b2b market right like it's selling to businesses kind of the majority of the time right sometimes it's but sometimes it's to consumers but most of the time it's to businesses so from a b2b perspective um price is a kind of like a huge thing right now and i think you're not competing against the other companies out there you're competing against but them just not spending money with you

37:37by like or spending money at all yeah so they're just like cool so should i spend money at all right now and like of course i'm gonna spend this money am i gonna have the time to use this software to use this service right and then what do i say myself like what do i email people about like we're an email we're an email tool right yes what the heck do i who do i sell to who do i market to who do i you know outreach to so like everything underneath the buying decision has collapsed but

38:11it's not collapsed it's changed but if i were an unknown if i were selling to myself a business owner who's dealing with a bunch of stuff to me it's collapsed the reality is it hasn't it's changed this has changed when i what time i have the day i email has changed my strategy has changed the cost of which i'm willing to pay has changed everything has changed and so as a salesperson you have to navigate the different things and you can get there but it's like a maze which one you

38:42solve first which one you know and so i think like what i typically say and i always do and i've seen the web profits team do this is consultative selling be helpful be educational um solve the problem like okay well what are you trying to do let's put our solution to the side like what's your biggest concern budget okay well let's let's get to that at the end what is the next one let's just say we can work with you on the budget check right for one second then you get to the core of the problem oh what if the messaging isn't well let's review it together cool at the end of like

39:15an hour call you might have just done all their work for them and just solve all their concerns by saying, well, you can adjust the copy here or do this or like, you know, whatever. Or no, what, you know what? That's not going to work. That's where you need to change. You know, your offering is too big or like too expensive, you know, blah, blah, blah. So I don't have the specifics. I just know that like navigating it through the zigzags is possible. And I have to say in three of our companies, three out of the eight, we had our biggest months ever last month.

39:47and April will be beating those months. So two months in a row with our best numbers ever. Now, top line revenue, not net new. So our churn is also obviously much, much higher, but to sell the best two months in this worst two, eight, seven weeks, eight weeks, depending on where you're at of a year, of a decade is a pretty big accomplishment, I would say. and and just moving it you know moving at the speed of light in the sense that like

40:22we had no strategy we we piece milled together after doing five or six different you know i guess calls and and and things worked so so did you have the best months ever um just because of the demand increase or was it things which you changed uh there was actually demand decrease demand decreased but you still it's things you changed our close rate went up um on the sales

40:53front um and then um we did a lot more things to improve the conversion rate so our responses right like you look at the web profits i know we're talking about sass but just take a look at the webprofits.agency website yeah it is about covid the response rate is covid related right like It is all about the messaging, right? So if whatever, you know, a business you're in, adjust the messaging, play with that. You can get, depending on how much traffic you can have, you have, you can get data back in very quickly. Yes.

41:24Same thing with your sales pitch, change that, adjust it, play with that, what works and your approach. You want more traffic, like wrong time, dude. Not going to get more traffic right now, right? Like, or maybe, maybe it is the right time to get more traffic. Because traffic is cheaper if your messaging is right. Messaging is at the core though. Yeah. So that was at the core of kind of what changed in those three companies, right? That kind of changed things around.

41:55And you kind of just like, I think because, you know, one of the objections, that's the closest word I can think of right now. When you hear a company succeeding is like, oh, their product was in demand. their product was in demand and so they didn't even have to try that hard and so yeah you know they're lucky but actually the message makes a huge kind of impact in kind of just capturing that demand is that right absolutely and especially now more than ever where emotions are high

42:30if you can get somebody pull the trigger on that emotion um meaning you read your message resonates with them yes and it's already going to be a slightly deeper level because of the fact that everybody's kind of already at an emotional state right yeah like you and i are at a higher emotional state than we ever have been um and that's the case like no matter what like we're all just a little bit on edge and that could be a good thing or a bad thing right so you have to play very

43:00so very good example of a bad thing president trump talking about digesting whatever right bleach bad thing bad whatever you think of the guy that's not a right statement to say now if he if somebody at his stature said that and it wasn't during this time not as bad of a thing right like uh or like if you just tied it back a little bit yeah could have been okay so like it just really the i think the biggest thing i'm saying here is

43:32right now sales and marketing people need to first treat the emotions related to what's happening to the prospect to the visitor to the potential buyer whether it's an ad or or a call or demo or whatever yeah um how long do you think the um the COVID-19 risk like like the messaging around COVID-19 is going to be relevant for, you know,

44:07because I mean, are people already starting to get sick of it? Like, or not? Like I'm starting to see it a little bit where like, I think everyone's kind of over lockdown. They just want to get out, right? They're like, you know, we've been here for a while now. COVID-19 still captures the eyes. Like I say, for example, if I'm looking at some subject lines in my emails and some things very specific about COVID-19 where everything else is still that standard stuff, right? And they haven't changed anything. But how long do you think it will be relevant

44:42before it needs to change? I think the... It's a hard question to be clear, right? I'm just asking your opinion. Yeah, so what I think is that like you have to play this on a week by week basis, right? Banner blindness, messaging, like fatigue happens, right? We're dealing with the unknown black swan of like an issue, right? But I mean, like, I think just look at it week by week

45:13and see if the performance starts to tank, right? I think as long as it's in health issue, the health play works, right? Like, sorry, if you say COVID-19, once we're past the health issue and the kind of things start to open up, which in the US kind of now they're starting to open up. Well, then there's the like, things are coming back to post COVID, right? And what happens after that? Like, does this, depending on how this plays out, is there like a resurgence of COVID? Like play the waves, right?

45:44We're in the wave of COVID's knee deep right now. There's still the health concern. After that, there's another concern. After that, there's another issue. So kind of, I guess, trying to stay relevant or maybe even another way around this is like nobody has all the answers so maybe you're one of those people who says here's how this thing plays out yeah or can play out and then here's what you can do right so like just go with that approach right i mean one of the first things people said was like when the stock market in the u.s started tanking people are hey don't don't

46:19freak out historically and they like i think some analysts did like a comparison over the last 100 years or something since the stock market existed anytime there's a crash generally speaking it got to positive 12 months within 12 months now we're dealing with the health crisis and then the financial crisis underneath it so this has to be removed before this can apply but this is historical you know data so i don't know um i would just say like things are going to be relevant for a while

46:49and nobody has the answer, test it week by week. I think what used to be a month or two of testing is now a week or two. And then like in a month or two, it might not be relevant anymore. So it's very, it sounds like it's very active. And I mean, you know, that's exactly the experience kind of that we're having just with ourselves and with our clients, right? It's very active right now. Like the messaging is changing. Like you can absolutely perform in this time and you can absolutely just get leads and sales

47:19and all that stuff in this time. It just requires massive amount of kind of effort and work and kind of like ability. Like you actually need to be pretty good at it. Like you can't fumble your way into it because at the moment you fumble, like if you fumble your way into it, you can get it wrong and it might just not work and you could hurt your brand, right? So there's a way to do it, but it does sound like it's extremely active right now, you know, like per week, per week, per week, changing everything every single week and having a look at everything.

47:52And, you know, like, you know, we changed our website across all three regions four weeks ago and we changed it in three days. Now I'm at the point where I'm thinking, I think it needs to change again. You know, I think like that message was relevant, was the most relevant message at the time. the times have changed pretty quick. And so now like how big is, well, how hard is it change all your messaging again across your website? I crush your content, I crush your Facebook ads,

48:23I crush everything else. Right. And I think, but that's what it is. That's what it is. Right. Yeah. It's going back to startup base. It's going back to like, let's just assume everything you knew about, like let's doesn't matter if you're like a billion dollar business or you're, you know, million dollar business. act like a startup, move fast, move, be nimble. Okay. You know, your, your content and marketing messages are going to change, make something where you can allow it to change quickly. Right.

48:56Change your headlines and sub headlines and like, don't make it so you have to rerecord a video every time and produce it. Right. So I think be smart with the fact that you need to be agile. And, and I think like the, The other thing about this is, although it's a bad time to think long-term, think long-term, like two things. How are you going to make it past this time? So do you have the financial runway to make it past whatever? So, you know, one thing I did at my business, all my businesses, and my partner and I did this in a week, actually like a Thursday through Monday, we did an okay, a bad, a worse financial planning.

49:38and we operated as if it was in the bad but ready to go to worse and it turns out okay was like let's just keep it simple okay was negative 10 so 10 decrease bad was 20 worse was like 40 right yeah play with those numbers depending on what's happening over a course of a week or two or three weeks whatever right but operate in the bad so you're gonna be like bad and then be able to move quickly right and so um let's say you know you're gonna have maybe have to do layoffs

50:10well tell the if you know like prepare the people you need who you need to actually run your business right um and and the others are the people you think might come in maybe you have that conversation saying look here's here's what's happening we're gonna hold on tight here it's time to be humane, right? If you know, try to be forward thinking. The other thing is invest in your future. So like at MailChimp, we've actually, we actually hired two devs. Why? It's a good time

50:44to hire because staff, people will take jobs for a little less money, right? Good, good, good time to hire essentially. And there's a lot of good people out there to hire, but we're, we're building like a sales engagement platform so we're doubling down and building and we know we can keep we can build and roll out during this slow time well it's not slow it's just different right like slow for growth it's slow for growth we're gonna be we'll be happy being like it would be my dream

51:15if we can end the next this next six month period being flat right or a little up like i mean like 1% up or 2% when we were on pace to double. Right. And so our reality is adjusted, but yeah, build, invest in R and D, build new product, do new things. I do think on the SAS front, you can build a, like a skunk works team, one or two devs to go quickly build something overnight. I, I, I don't doubt that you can build fast.

51:45I don't think you can scale fast to like from like an MVP or like a, a usable product to a scalable functioning long-term product. But I do think, I mean, stuff can be built in a day, in a weekend, right? Maybe you don't get all your customers on it. Maybe you get a few people, right? But yeah, you can, you can kind of scale. So like, you know, in the agency world, maybe we would offer like an audit service, or maybe we would offer like a, Hey, here's a one month plan. You know, I'm just thinking out loud here of like, those are things we would never do

52:18before but maybe now there is a time we would be willing to do a one month thing or like a you know a week by week installment in payments and i'm not saying we do any of this i'm just saying like those are random ideas that like if we said that if i cannot came up with you came to you with that idea you'd be like that's a stupid thing but now it's like maybe it would work you know so it's just yeah it's interesting on that point because i think um like i think everybody and this is including ourselves and this is something that we've done is question all the

52:49assumptions which you ever had you know you don't get good leads from search well you don't know who the leads are anymore first of all um your facebook ads doesn't convert actually kind of does depending on what you say right like or yeah this service that's not profitable well that service is in demand right now and you know the thing which you were selling before is but that's basically stop selling right and so i think um um uh it is that startup mode it is that kind of thinking behind questioning everything changing things quickly and creating creating a model which

53:22allows you to change fast yeah like say for example the changes on our website before we had like the 10 sales pages but now we've got three you know because well a we're not selling 10 things anymore we're selling kind of the one thing right like at the moment right which is helping organizations survive this thing you know and so thinking differently you know i think is important i also think you really only need one good offer right now to go to market with right i think a lot of companies the challenge um is they're not getting enough sales so you can solve that with

53:53one fantastic product one fantastic offer and a good promotion strategy you don't need to sell 10 things at the moment except except if you sell e-commerce stuff obviously right but just from a service perspective you know just need one one solid thing that can go to market that talks to the market that you can engage with them on you know one thing i want to add i know we said we talked for like 55 minutes about the dreary present and future that's gonna happen of like

54:24things suck you're gonna be on the intros whatever but i think that there is a lot of good one is innovation right um when people get laid off when people get fired when a mass amount of stuff changes yeah this is when the world innovates right um most people like i never would buy groceries online everybody's buying groceries online because they don't get sick right like it is a booming market right like online education used to be something that like

54:55no one would take seriously my two you know my 18 month old is is going to school online like he's like every every day he's like an hour with his teachers and peers right and he can point to zoom and point his friends out like i would never have thought about that a long time ago debatable that's good or not at this age but uh that's another time but like online education right is a big thing maybe that's the shift in the business model from like universities to online education, maybe, you know, telemedicine, right? Those are two industries I think are going

55:29to be changing very quickly, right? So although there is a really bad time in the world, can you get into those markets? How can you know, so think about how you can innovate. And then the other part of this is like, there will be in some industries, or in a lot of industries, a surge of people coming into the market, right? So e commerce, maybe there's a surge of people building e commerce stores. And if that's the case, if you're a service business, how can you tier towards new e-commerce stores? Um, exactly. Adjust your offering adjust.

56:00And maybe this is just temporary in terms of like your offering. Right. Yeah. Um, I think that's a super point. Um, just the final point around, um, um, this whole scenario that we find ourselves in is that you're quite well known, um, in the content marketing space. Right. Um, and like if anyone just has a look online they'll find a lot of stuff about that um to do with sujan patel yeah um but what are you seeing right now from a content marketing perspective because you

56:32know we keep hearing that content is being devoured right now right like yeah some yeah there's like quite a lot of organizations that aren't investing money but content is just kind of there right now So, and now it's getting very crowded, right? And so how would, or what would be the advice to people who are looking to create content that stands out? Yeah. So I think, so first and foremost, repurposing or reusing some of your best content is a

57:07good time. Like right now is perfect. Just change the messaging. Okay. bundle it together and maybe make like a table of contents and link all your best content together and say hey this is the corona like this is your guide to boredom right like read this or this is what you can do to learn a new skill right like i said i'm watching all the product management courses out there right or not course uh lectures out there and also past conferences i mean like again just repackage stuff now on that same light think about like you're trying to do like we're a

57:41SaaS business for sales, but guess what? People working remote and doing remote sales is a topically relevant thing right now. It's very current events. Not so much a thing that would care about. Like we, all the conferences in the sales space went virtual. I mean, conferences, everyone went virtual, right? But we can create a content library. It's like, here's all the free stuff you can consume, right? Or like there's all these virtual conferences, people don't have time. here's the key takeaways from them right um there's so much angles and things you can do to play so

58:16another thing is like here's your nightly learning here's your here's your weekend's guide to boredom right um stuff like that um so here so it sounds like you're a bit bored i think you mentioned that example the guide to boredom well i think a lot of people say they're bored that's a common thing i'm hearing about when i think bored is not the right word i think it's like unable to do unable to do the things that they normally want to do yeah sure fill the void

58:47because they don't want to think about the other stuff right they're tired about coronavirus thoughts they're consuming information if you can get them to read something else right um so what kind of content are you talking about now are you talking about articles are you talking about videos like are you talking about you know the big pieces of content like what are you talking about right now i would keep it short and punchy right now um like something digestible from your phone um an email newsletter is good um video is great right i think if you can um i

59:20think videos has worked since day one i think you might have to move to platforms like social like facebook and and linkedin and and twitter where people are spending more of their time and you You know, a friend of mine, Chris Winfield, is like, he's in the PR space and he's like, yeah, you can still do PR right now. Just try to work your way into the things people were talking about, right? So think about whatever business you do, right? So for us, I'm not sure it's sales. How do you do sales right now?

59:52I talk to you a lot about random things you can do to sell right now. So it's just thinking about how you can shove whatever topic and category you're in into slices of current events that are happening now. Super point. I think the good way to think about it is to focus on the industry and combine the industry basically with the current challenge, right? Like that's what you're saying, right? Like it's not about you, don't talk about you. That's not what it's about. Speak about because that's all the emails that I've ever received in the last four or five weeks

01:00:25is like it's all about their company and that they're surviving and all. That's not content. That's just a waste of people's time. Instead, just focus on, of course, how do you progress the industry right now? And, you know, how do you support this thing in this industry, right? And I think that's a super point. We're out of time. Trying to keep it kind of on point. I will give a quick plug to mailshake.com. That's the outreach software that we use. It's highly recommended. And it's very reasonably priced

01:00:58compared to all the other software out there. It's highly recommended. I mean, I use it, which is obvious. But look, thanks so much for your time, Sujin. And I know you've got a challenge with like 18 months and twins on the way and trying to keep everything together. So I do appreciate your time and sharing of your stories. It's very much appreciated, mate. Yeah, my pleasure. And everyone that wants to get in touch or whatnot, just tweet at me or find me on LinkedIn.

01:01:31And also you can check him out at sujanpatel.com as well. There's a lot of fantastic information around content marketing and stuff like that. Yeah, I have so many sites. You might have to do like a credit roll of like all the things to plug in. But look, I'm around if anyone needs help. Thanks for having me, Alex. Thanks, Sujan. Speak to you soon, mate. Later. Bye. Thanks for listening to the Growth Manifesto podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please head on over to iTunes and give us a five-star rating. For more episodes, please visit growthmanifesto.com forward slash podcast.