Growth Hacking Tools For Sales – Max Altschuler
growth hacking tools
SUMMARY
Utilizing growth hacking tools can help companies grow their revenue despite having less financial and human capital resources.
On this episode, we are here with Max Altschuler. He’s the founder of Sales Hacker, a media company that helps companies figure out how to really thrive with sales.
Max explains what sales hacking is and how it can help start-ups grow and scale their businesses. He also shares what software companies can use to leverage automation in their sales processes.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Sales hacking is finding ways to generate more revenue using fewer resources.
With sales hacking, nothing replaces the sales person but a lot of things can help supplement do their job better.
In sales, you’re acting as a bouncer where you’re qualifying people to the top of the funnel.
At the beginning of the funnel, it’s important to define your ideal customer profile.
Find time to search for that low-hanging fruit before you start going after those that are hard to reach.
When writing emails, shorten them and make things clear, concise, and conversational.
If you’re doing deals that aren’t just somebody swiping their credit card on your site, you have to be patient and go step by step.
Figure out who at your target companies is a common connection and use them to get in the back door.
TRANSCRIPTION: GROWTH HACKING TOOLS FOR SALES – MAX ALTSCHULER
Kamala Chambers
On this episode, we’re going to be talking about growth hacking tools for sales.
Luis Congdon
Today’s guest is Max Altschuler. He’s one of the first 10 employees of Udemy who helped them become a multibillion-dollar company. He’s also helped with companies like Attorney Fee Marketplace that was acquired by LegalZoom and he’s also the founder of Sales Hacker, a media company that helps companies figure out how to really thrive with sales.
All right, Thriving Launchers, let’s dive in and talking about growth hacking tools.
What Growth Hacking Tools For Sales Means
Luis Congdon
Max, can you get us started and tell us what exactly is sales hacking?
Max Altschuler
Yes.
Like hacking anything else, it is just finding ways to do more with less. Sales hacking is finding ways to generate more revenue using fewer resources.
I started using growth hacking tools when I was in an early stage start-up called Udemy which is not so early stage anymore. They do online courses and online education and we didn’t have a lot of resources but we had a scale fest so we had to find ways to generate more revenue using fewer resources and that means less financial resources, less human capital resources, so headcount.
We didn’t have a big brand behind us so we had to find ways to hack our sales process with the use of growth hacking tools.
Kamala Chambers
Let’s hear some of the top tips that you learned along that process for sales hacking and utilizing those growth hacking tools?
Growth Hacking Tools – Automate Certain Areas Of The Sales Process
Max Altschuler
Yeah.
Well, a big part of utilizing growth hacking tools was leveraging automation in our process.
I wrote a book on it called Hacking Sales but you take a normal sales process, going from understanding who your buyer is, creating the messaging around, had an appeal to that buyer, getting in front of them by emailing them, calling them, hitting them up on LinkedIn, on Twitter, then, having the conversation, doing the demo, nurturing them throughout the deal. Obviously, I’ll look at getting their contact information to contact them in the first place.
So it’s all these different steps that are part of a normal sales process and finding ways to get leverage inside of that sales process or automate certain areas of it.
How Growth Hacking Tool Help Salespersons Do Their Job Better
Max Altschuler
Nothing replaces the sales person but a lot of growth hacking tools can help supplement the salesperson to do their job better.
For example, if you’re an early stage company or even just an account executive at a large company and you need more support, you can go out and get a team of virtual assistants in the Philippines to do a lot of light work for you on web scraping, data analysis, and even responding to some emails or LinkedIn’s or tweets on your behalf based on certain canned responses.
That’s something we did at Udemy. We had a team of VAs in the Philippines that were acting as our sales representatives so they’re at the top of the funnel kind of gatekeepers for our sales team.
A lot of times in sales, people get this confused. You’re not trying to get as many people in. You’re actually acting as a bouncer. You’re qualifying people to the top of the funnel.
Growth Hacking Tools And Technology
Max Altschuler
Sales hacking is finding ways to make your sales machine more efficient and somewhat automated.
There’s a lot of technology out there now that you can use but few growth hacking tools that existed early on that we had at our fingertips like a company called ToutApp. We use them to do email sending. Now, you have companies like Outreach that allows you to do email, dialer, LinkedIn, SNS, all from one sales engagement platform.
There are plenty of growth hacking tools out there that people can use to help do this make it more efficient and more automated.
Luis Congdon
When you talk about being a bouncer at the beginning of the funnel, what are some things that you think people should consider when they’re creating that top of the funnel or when they’re just starting that process of using the growth hacking tools?
Growth Hacking Tools – Define Your Ideal Customer Profile
Max Altschuler
Yeah.
It’s really important to define your ideal customer profile.
For Udemy, we want to define instructors who are experts in a certain area, who potentially had taught courses before in the past so they would have an understanding about how to use the camera, how to use the microphone, how to use editing software and all these kind of stuff.
If you found somebody who already had online courses out there, and then you needed them to put them on your platform, which is Udemy, obviously, at a much higher chance of success than finding somebody who didn’t already have a course.
A person that already had a course could put their current course on. They could easily create new courses. Obviously, they already had the expertise and the experience doing so. For somebody who had never created a course, they might have to figure all that out from scratch.
Growth Hacking Tools – Know What A Least Ideal Customer Profile Looks Like
Max Altschuler
Then, your least ideal customer profile like the least ideal person is somebody who had never created a course before and might not even have any expertise in that area, just happens to be somebody who is on the internet talking about it.
It’s really just those different layers of “All right. Here’s a normal person who has no engineering experience. If I want them to teach a course in PHP, they are definitely not the right person.”
Then here’s somebody who’s on Twitter talking about PHP but they don’t have a course on the internet or a book or any other expertise, they’re probably not ideal either. Then there’s the next person who has a book on a subject but doesn’t have a course. They could get a course but it’s going to take them a little while to do it.
Growth Hacking Tools – Know How Much Time To Spend With Customers
Max Altschuler
Then, there’s the person who already has a course created who can put their current course on there and can create other courses very easily.
If you look at the four different levels of that ideal customer that I can go after, I’d rather spend all of my time going after the first bucket. Then maybe 10% of my time is going after the second bucket seeing how people will teach courses but my low-hanging fruit is really that first bucket, the people who already have courses.
Growth Hacking Tools – Find Time Searching For The Low-Hanging Fruit
Max Altschuler
If you’re on an early on or you’re an AE, find time searching for that low-hanging fruit or fruit that’s already on the ground before you start going after that hard to reach stuff because you really, in a lot of cases, don’t need to do it. You want to qualify people from being your ideal customer profile rather than just to reach everything that’s there.
Kamala Chambers
What are some of the biggest mistakes that you found yourself making or your clients making when it comes to making sales with the use of growth hacking tools that we could all avoid if we knew about them?
Biggest Mistakes In Using Growth Hacking Tools
Max Altschuler
The biggest mistake that I see is just being impatient. I think in the hyper growth mentality or the mental state that a lot of these companies have, they are very impatient about their sales processes because they got to get it from somewhere. The key to this is just having a fat pipeline and being really good at the top of the funnel then you could be a lot more patient.
What people don’t realize is most of the times, unless it’s a really transactional like SMB sale, when you’re reaching out and you’re making a connection, that’s just a step in the process. That’s just one of the growth hacking tools. You’re not going to close the deal from that first touch.
You see a lot of people writing these long bulky emails because they think they’re going to get so much of their point across that this person is going to buy right away. It’s really just about getting into the conversation.
Growth Hacking Tools – Be Patient And Go Step By Step
Max Altschuler
Shorten those emails. Make things clear, concise, and conversational so you can open a conversation that gets you to the discovery call, to the demo, and to the next step of the sales process.
Max Altschuler
If you’re doing deals that aren’t just somebody swiping their credit card on your site, you have to be patient and go step by step.
Luis Congdon
Max, that’s something that I think is really important because not too long ago, I hired someone to help me with the pitching process and their formula was do research on the company, find out who they are, some of the weaknesses they have, find out who the people in charge are, who you’re going to contact.
Growth Hacking Tools – Write Something That Connects
Luis Congdon
Then, you write these really long bulky email complimenting them on their successes, letting them you know who they are, giving them some tips on how they can improve their business, and some things that you saw that could help them because you’re the person that does this kind of work. Then you show links to social proof, and then research stats as to why the tips that you gave are very useful, and then asking them to get on a discovery call.
I tried that method, it didn’t work. It was really hard. Basically, what I did is I just took the “do your research,” write them something that’s pretty personal with a headline. Then for the most part, you copy and paste a lot of the email after just connecting with the personal thing but keeping it short.
Max Altschuler
Yeah.
Keeping it conversational is the key. You can follow up with all of that other stuff later. You have to have some kind of attention grabber, and you should do the research, find something thoughtful you can say that’s going to be something that can start a conversation but not so long where “I’m going to look at it and then close it.”
Growth Hacking Tools – Write Something That’s Interesting
Max Altschuler
Think about like most of these people are checking these emails on their phone. If it’s too long, it’s too daunting and I don’t know you, I’m immediately closing it. I’m not going to read it.
But if it’s like one to two sentences and it’s asking me a question about something I was just doing research on, and you can find that out, then that’s interesting.
Another way to do it is to go through a back channel.
Growth Hacking Tools – Go Through A Back Channel
Max Altschuler
If you want to get in touch with me and sell to me, certainly, the best way to do it is through somebody in my network who is a trusted advisor or so to speak, or somebody I respect. If you get an intro from them, I’m probably going to have to take the call at some point. It might not be immediately, but at some point, I’ll probably have to get on the phone with you. That’s another way to get in.
There are ways to automate that too. There are plenty of technologies out there now that allow you to see who you and everyone at your company are connected to at other target accounts.
So if you have your ICP and you go and build a list of the target accounts that follow within that ICP or the target companies you can call it, then, figure out who at those companies a common connection might know and then use them to get in the back door.
Recommend Growth Hacking Tools
Luis Congdon
Max, before we wrap out, I’d love to hear from you what are some of the software that you see are working really well ranging from some of the more expensive ones? I know there are some software like 10-15 grand/year. If you can make your money back, it isn’t a lot but for the average person, that might be quite a big investment.
Then, I know that Salesforce for example, you can pay them at a thousand dollars a month and they have a team of VAs go out and do the scraping and do the emailing and all that kind of stuff.
What are some software or tools that you would recommend for people to check out varying in prices?
Growth Hacking Tools And Software For Those Who Are Price Agnostic
Max Altschuler
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is probably the one thing I recommend for everyone price agnostic. If you’re building a sales process, you probably need a license there.
Next is like a sales engagement tool. So if you’re at a larger company and you have budget and you need some robust capabilities, Outreach is a great one.
For smaller companies that don’t have as much money to spend, you can use like a Mixmax. Bigger companies can use a Discover World to get contact information and head count information. ZoomInfo and Clearbit are other good ones there. Toofr is another good one and Listeo for job change notifications. Drift is a really good chat bot/chat tool so they’re like the leaders in conversational marketing.
Gong is a call analysis and a conversational intelligence tool. So if you’re a manager and you have a team of reps, that’s another good one to make sure everybody’s doing the best practices.
Growth Hacking Tools And Software For Contact Info And ICP Info
Max Altschuler
LeadIQ is another good one for contact info and ICP information. It’s pretty good and sweet. I wrote a book on it called Hacking Sales so there are lots of information there and then obviously on hackingsales.com. We have blog posts on this stuff all the time.
Kamala Chambers
All right, Max, we’ve been talking about utilizing growth hacking tools for sales and I encourage everyone who’s listening to just go out and find one thing that you can apply today and come back to this interview again because Max has given us so much valuable content.
Everyone, keep thriving and start sales hacking.
