Sales & Marketing Archives - Solopreneur Grind

A big conference and sales week

Josh Schachnow — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:57:48 +0000

Happy Monday folks, hope you had a great week and are ready to rock for this update and upcoming week ahead. Let’s jump in:

Update and story of the week

Very hectic week on my end for 2 reasons.

First, I attended a pretty cool conference that started Thursday night and ran through Saturday: the CBA Immigration Conference in Ottawa, Canada.

I know, I know: probably sounds like a major snooze to you.

But to an immigration laywer like me – and especially as one who sells software to immigration lawyers – it was a big one. Not only because we got to show off our immigration tech platform, Visto, but because I got to meet a lot of great lawyers and people who I’ve connected with over the years, mostly online, and shake their hands in person.

Despite getting pretty comfortable in a mostly virtual now, I still think nothing beats a good in-person conversation. Agree?

Second, we had a huge sales week – the biggest we’ve ever had – and added more than 5 law firms (paying customers) to the Visto platform in a matter of days. We actually had 2 clients convert while we were in the car driving from Toronto to Ottawa for the event!

I can really see us turning a corner here, in a great way, as our product is starting to catch on and our revenue is starting to reflect that.

Now we need to keep the pedal to the metal and the snowball rolling…

Key takeaway

Not only am I excited from our recent progress, but all of the interest we got from the event last week. Lots of good connections and demos scheduled as a result.

And something I forgot about, a little, is how important events and in-person networking is.

Everything else is good to too – cold emails, calls, video conferencing, etc. – but I am confident that the connections I made during that event, where we were able to shake hands and talk in-person, will lead to higher quality connections and prospects.

Key takeaway: don’t forget about the power of in-person. Whether it’s attending some conferences, networking events, or even going to visit a prospect or client in-person.

Books

I finished The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty and loved it. As mentioned in my previous emails, this is a fantasy/fiction novel, and a bit out of the norm, but if you like that genre then I highly recommend it.

I’m now about 1/3 through The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time: Apple, Ford, IBM, Zappos, and Others Made Radical Choices that Changed the Course of Business by Verne Harnish.

So far, a very cool read. It basically goes decision-by-decision and breaks down how and why it happened, and what was so great about it.

For example, why 3M’s decision to give their employees 15% of their week as free time to work on their own projects has made such profound impacts on their company in the last century.

It’s a pretty easy and short read, with punchy lessons that will get you thinking. Full review when I finish it next week, but so far, so good.

How to get over your fear of cold calling, and a big sales “first”

Josh Schachnow — Sun, 07 May 2023 18:58:52 +0000

Is there anything worse than a lingering cold?

I mean, probably yes.

But when you’re going through it, it feels like hell and the thought of just getting better is like heaven on earth. Suffice to say my runny nose is still sticking around, but hopefully back to 100% asap.

That being said, I’ve gotten into a decent groove with cold calling over the last few months and wanted to quickly chat about it.

Because I feel like over the years it’s fallen to the wayside, as everybody looks to automate everything.

Cold email campaigns, cold LinkedIn outreach, cold Insta DM’ing.

And some of those are great, if done well. But from what I see in my inbox, and the amount of terrible, ice cold LinkedIn crap I get – most of it probably isn’t all that great. It also means even more opportunity for those of us who haven’t given up on cold calling.

Because while everyone else is worrying about perfecting their cold tech this and that, I’m just having honest conversations with people, on the phone.

Which is probably the best way to present your product/service, instead of being 1 in a million emails/LinkedIn messages/etc. That being said, it ain’t easy. There’s a reason so many people love the cold tech stuff – they can sit behind their comfy computers, and just press a few buttons.

Now don’t get me wrong – some of that stuff can work, and work well. But there’s a reason cold calling has, and probably still is, the most effective way to close new clients.

The trick is, mostly, getting over your fear of it.

Because unless you’ve done a lot of it before, or are extremely comfortable starting cold conversations with random people, it’s probably at least a little bit intimidating.

I know it was for me.

But one of the things I’ve learned, after probably hundreds of cold calls now, is that it’s like anything else – the more you do it, the better you get, the more confidence you get doing it, and it’s a virtuous cycle.

The hardest part is mostly in the setup:

have a defined target market
get a good list of these people ahead of time (with contact info)
have a script ready for how you’d like the convo to go and key messages to get across
know the key outcome you want to get from the call (demo booked? free trial? followup call?)

That’s half the battle.

And I talk more about it in the recent short snippet video I posted on Youtube Shorts/Tiktok. We basically take snippets from the Grind Mastermind Podcast, and repurpose them.

Bite sized knowledge, from yours truly. Check out the video on Shorts here, or Tiktok here.

Also had a cool “first” last week in my cold outreach adventure.

As most of you know, it’s been a big focus on sales and growth for the last month or so.

Cold calling, emailing, scheduling demos, trying to get new users, etc. And we actually had a pretty good month of April, so that’s exciting. I’m also continuously trying to learn and improve my sales game, because if I’m being honest, I’m not an A+ in sales.

I think I’m pretty good at sales – heck, I’ve been doing it on-and-off for the last 6 years for my law firm, then in tech for Visto. But I’d say I’m more of an operations guy than a sales guy.

Which made my sales “first” today even more exciting. So what was it?

Well, as you know we sell immigration software, and so the usual flow is cold outbound, then try to book a demo, then do a demo, then get them to sign up for our free trial.

Now what my sales advisor told me to aim for was to try and close a new user in as few steps as possible. So instead of cold calling and trying to book a demo – try to do the demo live, on the cold call, and avoid adding an extra step.

Makes sense logically right? If you can sign up a new user in 1 step instead of 2 or 3, that’s ideal. First because it’s faster, and second because there are fewer chances for the lead to fall off (back out, skip a call, etc.).

Today, I landed my first new user sign up on a cold call – all in one step – and it felt great.

I made the call, confirmed they were in our target market and that they were interested in our product, then asked if they had 10 minutes for a quick demo on the spot. They said yes!

So I quickly swapped us over to a video call, gave the demo and got them signed up for our trial. All within about 25 minutes from calling them that first time.

Now for some of you A+ salespeople out there, that might just be another day in the office. But for a guy who hasn’t done a ton of tech sales, it was a fun accomplishment to convert a brand new user right from a cold call.

Suffice to say, I’m just warming up over here… and if I can keep up this work, and continue improving as I go, I think we’re going to have a good few months at Visto. Hopefully you’re enjoying the journey too, and if there’s any part of that story/sequence/sales content that interests you, hit reply to let me know and I can go into more detail.

I’d also say I think I crossed the cold calling chasm.

And what I mean by that is, I’m starting to get comfortable doing it.

Like anything that’s sort of new or a little intimidating, it can take some time to get settled in before feeling confident in a certain task.

Selling, creating content, riding a bike, you name it.

After some more reps and advice, I’m starting to feel pretty confident with my cold callng game, which makes waking up and doing it everyday that much easier.

And I think it comes down to 2 things:

being well prepared
doing it a lot

Doing something a lot is pretty simple. The more you do it, the better and more confident you’ll get, especially if you’re being intentional with it and adjusting along the way.

Selling, creating content, riding a bike, etc.

But the other thing that’s helped me a lot for cold calling is being prepared. In this case, with a really good script.

As I’m making calls, I’m looking over on my second screen to my script that lists exactly what to say at the beginning, what to say depending on their response, how to close out the call, etc.

With a good script, I know exactly what to say about 85% of the time. And when that’s the case, it’s just a matter of going through the motions and hitting your numbers to get results.

And it’s probably the same with anything – selling, creating content, riding a bike, etc.

Have a good plan/guide in place and it will make doing those things much easier.

Maybe overly simplistic, but hey, usually the best business advice is…

Have a great day, make sure to sign up for my daily solopreneur tips here, and keep grinding.

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How 1 LinkedIn Live got me 650+ views in less than 12 hours

Josh Schachnow — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 17:06:04 +0000

Oh boy, what a week in the immigration world.

For those who don’t work in the Canadian immigration industry, the government workers went on strike last week. This basically means that the staff that are responsible for processing millions of immigration applications in Canada each year… didn’t go into work due to a strike.

And as you can imagine, this is not a good thing for people who are submitting these applications – the aspiring immigrants and the immigration professionals they work with.

Suffice to say, not a happy day.

Now for all I know there is probably a decent reason to be striking (I know they’re negotiating higher pay, etc.), but I hope it doesn’t last a long time.

I woke up yesterday and decided to go live on LinkedIn to talk about it.

Why?

Because if all we’re getting is a bunch of bad news, might as well talk about it in public and hopefully drum up some good chatter.

Here’s how it played out:

woke up and realized the strike was happening
texted a colleague of mine around 830am to ask if he wanted to go live with me on LinkedIn to discuss it
scheduled a LinkedIn Live for 1pm
posted the event on LinkedIn to promote it at 11am
had 60+ people sign up to the event on LinkedIn ahead of time
went live at 1pm and had an average of 45 viewers for the entire 1 hour session

The post and subsequent video generated a ton of buzz, and I think plays into something we should all be doing as solopreneurs – positioning ourselves as industry experts and at the forefront of important industry conversations.

And as a result, it’s generated 73 comments, 6 shares and over 650 views – in less than 12 hours! And I’m sure it will get more views and comments over the next few days as well. I’ll keep you posted.

It’s also in line with something I discussed with a friend about onboarding last week.

Because another thing I’ve learned in the last few months is how important this part of the process is in tech (stay with me for a minute here, I’m bringing it all together I swear…).

When you sell a product, it’s pretty simple – they pay you, you give product. When you sell a service, it’s pretty simple too – they may pay you upfront, may not, then you provide the service.

When you sell tech, there’s typically some form of onboarding at the very least. Especially if you offer free trials.

They sign up, they hopefully use the tech, you keep reminding them to try the tech, they hopefully like the tech, they upgrade to becoming a paid subscriber.

If things go well.

But there’s a whole bunch of nuanced stuff that goes on in there.

What are the terms of the free trial?
When and how do you sign them up?
Can they sign up on their own or do they need an invite?
When do you follow up to see if they are using/liking the tech?
How can they upgrade?
What do you do if they sign up and don’t try it?

You get the picture. Lots going on. So we were strategizing ways to improve the Visto onboarding experience, so we can get as many users to try – and upgrade – to our paid plan.

The interesting thing about launching new tech products is there’s no perfect way to do it. You have to test and adjust.

For example, should you offer a free trial? Well, probably… depending on your product.

All you can do is test a free trial, see how it goes and adjust based on how things are going. Same with onboarding, pricing, etc.

One strategy may have worked for Hubspot in 2014, but that doesn’t mean it will work for Visto in 2023. As an example. Similarly, going live on LinkedIn may be great this year, but not the next.

As I’ve learned to start saying nowadays – ABT. Always Be Testing!

Have a great day, don’t miss my daily business tips here and keep grinding.

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Warm weather, accountability and tech launches

Josh Schachnow — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 16:59:10 +0000

Happy Monday folks, and hopefully you had a good weekend.

Over here in Toronto it’s starting to warm up. Apparently it’s actually going to be a cold week ahead, but we had a nice warm weekend which was great. Because as some of you may know, spending months in the dark/indoors through a Canadian winter isn’t always that fun.

More warm weather = more sun which usually = more energy, good moods, etc.

I also got back into running outside, a routine that I don’t like during the winter. Although if you want to read about the time I was forced to train outside by running in a Canadian winter, definitely check out my blog post from last year on running my first (and only?) marathon.

I find that running, like business, and almost anything else, is about setting a plan and then staying consistent. Everything else is usually not quite as important. Consistently and hard work probably trump everything, so make sure to never forget that (even though we all do at times).

It’s one of the reasons I’m finally pulling the trigger on that Discord community I’ve been thinking about for a while, but wanted to wait for the right time and reason before doing it. The main reason is simply to keep each other accountable, because it’s so easy as an entrepreneur not to have that accountability or system in place, to keep you consistent, day in and day out.

So what I did is create a basic Discord community, and the main focus is keeping yourself accountable. All we do (mostly me for right now because it’s so new) is post once per day, about the 1-3 things we want to get done that day. And then at the end of the day, post an emoji to show it foyu got it done or not (thumbs up or down).

That’s it.

So far, even after a few days, it’s helped me stay focused and consistent because I know others are watching.

Anyway, getting back to business and recent progress, when I first got into tech I thought that building and launching products was a good chunk of the work.

What I quickly learned is that’s the easy part.

Since we all have ideas and what we think are good solutions, we think that building and launching will lead to instant riches. Maybe that’s how it happens for some – the Facebook’s of the world – but for most, it’s a much different road.

A road filled with crickets.

Meaning that you launch a product, then realize you have to actually go and sell the thing! And to add a kicker, selling software can often mean convincing people to try a new piece of technology that they’ve never used before – which I’ve found to be a bit harder than selling a traditional service.

Now I don’t want to turn everyone away from tech. Far from it.

Just trying to share from my experience, so that more people do more prep before building tech products in the future. And also realize that once you build the product, the real journey begins.

Selling, marketing, talking to users, getting their feedback and adjusting, etc.

It’s one reason we’re adding in a big new feature this week at Visto, because it’s something a lot of users, and potential users, are asking for.

A big reason I usually recommend keeping your MVP – initial product – super barebones and just getting it out into the public asap. So you can talk to users, get feedback, and only build in what they actually want, instead of spending way too much time building features they might not even use.

I’ll keep you posted as we build it in and launch it, and hopefully it leads to some good traction.

Have a great day, make sure to follow along for my daily solopreneur tips here, and keep grinding.

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Big events coming up this month

Josh Schachnow — Sun, 16 Apr 2023 18:45:55 +0000

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, we’re back in action after our long weekend here in Canada.

And a few big events coming up in the next few weeks.

First, as many of you know, I’m a big fan of in-person solopreneur networking events.

If you’re trying to start or grow a business, find partners, expand your network – anything – it’s usually beneficial to get out there and meet new people.

Now that I’m 7+ years into my career, it’s funny, because I can trace back many of the great opportunities or breaks I’ve got back to some form of networking.

It’s also why I started running my own networking events in downtown Toronto a few years ago.

If you’re in, or will be in, Toroton for the last week of April, make sure to check out my networking event here.

My new podcast cohost Chris and I are also settling into a good groove with our new show – The Grind Mastermind.

A few months ago I switched up my interview-style podcast, to more of a duo accountability type show where we talk about our journeys of growing our own businesses, and checkin every 2 weeks.

If you want to hear about how Chris is growing his copywriting business, and how I’m growing my immigration tech company, I would definitely recommend checking it out. We spend ~20 minutes talking about how the last 2 weeks went and our plans for the next 2, then another 10ish minutes talking about the books we’re reading and new tools we’re trying.

It’s a lot of fun.

Not only that, we actually record the video live – so if you want to tune in, listen in, ask questions or make comments, make sure to subscribe to it on Youtube here.

I’ve also been cutting up the podcast into video snippets for youtube shorts and tiktok, which seems to be a decent marketing strategy…

Maybe more on that tomorrow?

Have a great day, make sure to also grab my daily solopreneur tips here, and keep grinding.

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How we’re using Chat GPT

Josh Schachnow — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 17:36:57 +0000

Has a day gone by in the last few months without someone mentioning Chat GPT?

Well, in case today was going to be the first day for you – I think I just ruined it.

Oops!

Anyway, I think there’s no denying AI is already – and will continue to – changing the game. Especially for businesses, and especially for solopreneur businesses that try to get the most output from minimal input, like solopreneurs, small startups, etc.

I also find it really interesting how different so many peoples views are on things like Chat GPT. On one hand you have people embracing it and trying to do the impossible, and on the other, people who are scared crapless and think it’s the worst thing in the world.

Still the very early days in the AI scheme of things, but I think that as solopreneurs, we have to find ways to embrace it and benefit our businesses accordingly.

Not saying you need to rush to use it right now, but especially as some of these AI tools get better, the businesses that do embrace AI – and reap the rewards from using it – will far outclass the ones who don’t.

Just my opinion, which of course could be wrong.

It’s also something Chris and I chatted about in the most recent episode of the Grind Mastermind podcast, where we go live every 2 weeks to chat about our businesses, how the last 2 weeks went, our goals for the next 2 weeks, and cool tools/books we’re into.

Of course, Chat GPT came up as Chris is using it for a whole whack of awesome, time-saving activities for his copywriting business, and we’re using it to improve our SaaS product at Visto.

If you want to watch or listen to the full episode, which I highly recommend, you can check it out here.

And if you want to get updated anytime we release a new episode, make sure you’re on the email list here.

Have a great day and keep grinding.

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Sales rejections and systems for scaling

Josh Schachnow — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 17:31:29 +0000

I was complaining to my sales advisor last week.

And he sent me some wise words in the world of sales:

“That’s the joy of sales. You’ll get more rejection before 10 am than most people do their entire life”

It’s also why, according to him, it’s usually the sales people get paid the biggest bucks in most companies.

And I can see why.

It’s not because sales is the hardest thing to do in the world. I wouldn’t say it’s super easy, but it’s not rocket science.

What is hard, is getting after it every day – day in and day out – knowing that your day is going to be filled with “no’s”, no-shows, slow responses, hang ups, and more.

And that’s just in the first few hours of the day…

These last few weeks have really given me an appreciation for full-time sales folks, because it’s an absolute grind. Especially at earlier stage companies where you have no brand reputation, loyalty, large list of logos or testimonials, etc.

And especially for those building the top of the funnel – the people cold calling, emailing, scheduling meetings, etc. Maybe there are die-hard, born-to-sell salespeople, but I don’t think I’m one of them.

But hey, when you’re trying to get your company off the ground, it’s what it takes. And it means I’ll be that much better at hiring salespeople when it’s time for us to scale.

It also makes sales that much sweeter – when you do get a client to convert, it’s like heaven on earth. So here’s to all the folks out there grinding away at sales, or heck, anything else for that matter!

I feel your pain…

The other interesting part about doing a lot of sales is how it can fluctuate.

And in any given week, if a whole bunch of your cold outbound converts and you’re able to line up a bunch of demos/sales calls, you can end up with hectic days of 10+ calls in a single day.

Certainly makes for a long one.

The problem is that with so many calls packed into one day, they can start to blur together and you forget who you talked to about what. Which isn’t ideal if you want to keep good records and remember the next steps needed for each call.

Because of this, I’ve found 2 good systems to put in place to handle it.

First, always buffer your calls – aka give a few minutes in between each.

So if your calls typically take 30-40 minutes, try to space them so there’s at least a 5-10 minute gap. This allows you to take notes, send a follow up email with next steps, go to the bathroom, and prepare for the next call.

Second, have a good CRM or tool that makes note-taking and reminders easy.

We use Hubspot because the CRM is decent and they have a free tier, but there are a million sales CRMs out there. Heck, if it’s a small operation, you could even use a google sheet, but that isn’t all that powerful.

If you’re doing a lot of selling, have multiple teams members and want to integrate things like reminders, etc., then it’s definitely worth trying out a proper CRM. After all, time is money…

With the right buffer, you should have enough time to – at the very least – take some notes on how the call went and things you need to do next, follow ups, etc. so you don’t forget before you’re rushed into the next call.

At the end of the day, you’ll be happy you did.

Any other good sales tips, systems or tools you recommend? Always open to suggestions.

Have a great day, make sure to catch my business updates and stories right in your inbox here, and keep grinding.

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Tiktik videos, Youtube Shorts and Events, and branching out of your business bubble

Josh Schachnow — Sun, 02 Apr 2023 18:54:22 +0000

Yesterday I mentioned that some of my Youtube Shorts were starting to pop off. And wanted to go into some detail on my strategy thus far.

Interestingly, my stance on Shorts has changed a bit in the last few months, especially as compared to Tiktok.

A few months ago I was all-in on Tiktok and thought it was probably the best video platform to be posting on, especially for short form videos/clips.

My stance has changed a bit since then, mainly for two reasons:

First is that there seems to be a decent risk of Tiktok being banned in the US. It’s definitely not guaranteed, but given the recent hearing in the US with Tiktok’s CEO, it doesn’t look like the US is the biggest fan of the company. Not saying it’s going to go away tomorrow, but worth keeping an eye on.

Second, is they seem to be slowly drifting towards the pay-to-play arena that Facebook and Instagram are more well known for. And by this, I mean it’s harder to get organic views and growth without spending money on ads.

For this reason, as I’ve continued to post short clips from the new Solopreneur Grind podcast – The Grind Mastermind – I’ve been posting them on both Youtube Shorts and Tiktok.

My Tiktok channel has shown some slow growth, but video views seem to be stuck in the 150-200 views per episode. Not terrible, but not great.

Shorts is interesting because while my average views per video is probably around the same, some of the more recent videos are starting to do better – getting into the high 3-figures, and some videos getting to 4-figure views too.

It’s too early to tell, and I think consistency is key here either way (I post a video snippet 4-6 times per week on both), but I think Tiktok is losing a little bit of the edge it had in the video space.

Note: Instagram Reels may be a decent option too, I just strongly dislike using Instagram.

Anyway, I’ll keep posting these snippets and let you know how these numbers develop over time.

Regarding the new podcast format, we also made a change and are recording it live (before we then scrape the audio and post the podcast version).

And if you want to tune into the show live, it’s every second Friday at 9am EST – which you can actually sign up for now that I’ve learned you can create Youtube Live events!

So if you want to follow along or watch/listen to the show live – which also means you can chime in, ask questions, etc. – then make sure you’re subscribed on Youtube here.

So far the episodes have been a lot of fun and a nice shake up from the interview-style show as well.

Lastly, I went to a solid networking event last week too.

And I think that no matter what kind of business you’re building or what your role is, it’s important and valuable to “get out of the house” once in a while, as they say.

Especially if you’re working from home.

What I’ve found is if you’re very focused on your business and working from home, or the same small office, or coffee shop, or coworking space, etc., it can be very easy to get stuck in your little bubble.

And that there’s extreme value in going out and meeting some random people, having interesting conversations and tell people about what you’re working on.

Not in a salesy way. There’s some magic that happens when entrepreneurs get out, mix and mingle with one another. It’s also refreshing and can give you a much needed motivation boost.

Because when you’re in your bubble it can be easy to forget that there’s a whole world out there, and to a random person, what you’re working on is actually really cool and something they’d never heard of.

And once in a while, it can be nice to hear that from an outsider. At least, from my experience.

Do you agree?

And if you’re feeling stuck in your own little business bubble, try it out.

Go find a networking event on Eventbrite, or whatever other platforms exist that can help you find cool events nearby, and meet some random people.

You’ll get a breath of business fresh air, and you never know who you can meet too…

Have a great day, don’t miss out on my daily stories from my business adventures here, and keep grinding.

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A solid sales tip and hardest thing I’ve done

Josh Schachnow — Sun, 02 Apr 2023 18:48:04 +0000

Some good sales advice that I got over the weekend and wanted to share with you kind readers.

As you know, we’re on a big marketing and sales push right now for Visto.

We got our awesome product built, so now most of our focus is on getting more and more clients, more adoption, more conversions, etc. And part of what I’m doing is cold calling, as I’ve talked about in some of my emails over the last few weeks.

It’s been a few weeks of cold calling now, and as I’ve mentioned in the past, it’s a pretty interesting experience.

Have you done much/any cold calling? It can be intimidating at first.

I was coincidentally talking to someone in tech sales over the weekend, and they had some good advice. Which was basically to – before thinking about or trying to make sales – make a personal connection with the person.

Don’t get right into pitching, don’t get into you or how you think you can help.

First, start with them – ask them questions, seem genuinely curious about them, personalize yourself a bit, and just get into a conversation about your mutual topic/industry.

It was interesting advice, because so far my strategy has been more of a “get to the point and don’t waste their time” approach. Which, to be honest, has been working pretty well.

But what this guy was saying made sense too – try and quickly turn it into an interesting, personal conversation, and eventually they’re going to ask why the heck you called them. And if you did a good job making a genuine connection, they’ll at least hear you out and consider what you have to say.

It’s an interesting shift.

On one hand, it’s quick and easy to make a short pitch to see if what you’re offering is of any interest. But on the other hand, maybe to get more buy-in and commitment, it’s better to draw things out and build up more trust.

As is usually the case in business, there’s no perfect approach. Both can and probably do work, if done well.

So I’ll probably do a bunch of each, and see which converts better. And as always, report the results to you.

Was also having a cofounder chat with our CTO at Visto, Alex over the weekend.

Sometimes things just get so hectic during the week that it’s easier to chat the two of us over the weekend.

Anyway, we had a lot on our agenda, then usually the serious stuff is finished and we just shoot the shit about whatever is top of mind.

At which point, I went on a tangent/rant about how much harder it is selling tech than “regular stuff”. Mainly because we’re so focused on sales right now, so it’s very top-of-mind.

But as someone who has done a fair amount of sales as a service solopreneur business owner (for my previous law firm) and tech (current tech company Visto), I can safely point out some of the differences.

And let me tell you – I think selling new technology is probably 5 to 10 times harder than selling services. Maybe more.

Here’s why:

Generally speaking, when you’re selling services, it’s pretty straight forward. It’s easy to describe what you’re offering, the prospective customer has probably purchased that service or something similar before, and it’s more a matter of pricing, trust, etc.

When you’re selling tech, especially if it’s a new tech product, and extra especially if you’re trying to get prospective customers to adopt technology to do something they’re used to doing manually, not only do you have to convince them that your product is awesome, you have to convince them it’s worth paying for and then also get them to actually use it.

Much easier said than done, doubly so if you’re not a big name tech company (for example, selling Salesforce solutions or Facebook ads are probably much easier than if you’re selling software for a brand new company).

It’s one of the few reasons that starting a tech company from scratch has been one of the hardest things I’ve tried doing. As hard as it is to start any regular business selling products or services, I find selling tech products that much harder.

But the payoff can also be much bigger… if you can pull it off…

As always, I’ll keep you posted on how that goes for us.

Have a great day, make sure to get the most up-to-date content of mine on my email list/business journal, and keep grinding.

The post A solid sales tip and hardest thing I’ve done appeared first on Solopreneur Grind.

AI for solopreneurs and knowing your business

Josh Schachnow — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 17:32:48 +0000

Had an interesting chat with someone yesterday about AI and how the future of work will look because of it.

I’m not a deep tech nerd, I’ve just helped build some basic software, but it seems like AI is going to be a game changer for everyone, especially solopreneurs.

And it’s probably just starting to heat up.

But as a business owner, it seems like great news to me. Whether you’re in tech, law, accounting, etc. If you run a business you’re probably going to be able to automate many of the basic tasks you either have to do yourself, or have to pay people to spend lots of time on.

Writing content. Creating visuals. Drafting proposals.

It’s not perfect yet, but really good, and at the very least can help reduce the time it takes you or your team to get the same amount of work done.

For you, that means you can free up more time for things like more sales, more marketing, more training, or more free time to sleep…

It could be more room to grow, or it could mean making the same amount of money at the end of the year but spending half the time or money on your business.

I guess it depends on the person/business owner, but it’ll be interesting to see how it changes our culture and business operations as it gets more advanced and more common in operations.

Have you been using any good AI tools yet? They seem to be popping up all over the place now, getting lots of funding, etc.

But I guess only time will tell.

Onwards to other topics, we’re gaining some good momentum this week. In a weird way, can feel the tides turning, if that makes sense.

Not to say that things weren’t going well before, but over the years, I’ve found that as the CEO of a company who sees all of the inputs and outputs, you can kind of “feel” how your business is doing.

Even without seeing a monthly income statement, which is even more important in the tech world.

Here’s what I mean.

When I was just running a small law practice, the motions were pretty straight forward. You do marketing, sales, etc., and based on the number of calls and clients that seem interested, it’s pretty clear to see how you’re doing each month.

In tech, especially when building and launching new products, there’s a lot that’s up in the air.

Will your new product be a hit? Will users like it? Will they even want to see it? Pay for it? Will word of mouth catch on? Will clients churn (ie. stop using your product) quickly?

In short, lots of uncertainty along the way and in different phases.

But I feel like only in the last year or so, I’ve gotten better at being more in tune with the business. This is going to sound esoteric and borderline crazy, but I can sense how it’s doing and have a good idea of whether things are good or not, whether we’re heading in the right direction or not.

Of course, there can and will always be uncertainties, and nothing is guaranteed. But the wheels are spinning, good things are in motion and I think we have an exciting few months ahead of us with more opportunities popping up every day.

This doesn’t mean we can coast – on the contrary, need to keep grinding it out. But if we do, I like where we’re heading.

Can you relate?

I’d say it took a solid 2-3 years to become more in tune with how the biz was doing, but once you do, you can use that good or not-so-good feeling as a guiding light to figure out when you need to keep pushing, or maybe switch things, or something in between.

Anyway, maybe you can relate, or maybe I’m just half crazy!

Have a great day, make sure not to miss my daily updates here, and keep grinding.

The post AI for solopreneurs and knowing your business appeared first on Solopreneur Grind.