Creating Predictable Revenue for Your Business with Aaron Ross

Learn the basics of creating a predictable revenue with Aaron Ross as he talks about lead generation and building your first sales team.

Lead generation in creating a predictable revenue
What drives growth?

What causes growth to stall?

This is Aaron’s main lesson from Salesforce.com which was around $25M revenue and mostly in small companies when he joined; whereas they wanted to go up towards larger companies.

They hired a lot of salespeople but it wasn’t bringing in qualified leads.

So Aaron created a pipeline for this because you have to have a predictable leads creation system.

Product-led growth is an interesting term.
3 types of leads - Seeds, Nets & Spears
Seeds

This is word of mouth - friends, family, customer referrals - organic growth.
These are mostly free, have fast sales cycles and tend to be easier.
These are however hard to grow

Nets
Marketing - one-to-many broadcasts, advertising, etc.

It’s more about the number of leads rather than quality. Whether in e-commerce or B2B.
Spears
Outbound selling, - typically a targeted list and reaching out directly to see if it’s a fit.

Eg distribution partner for e-commerce Or brand owners for agency owners

These are harder to find but much more valuable potentially.
How to decide which to focus on creating a predictable revenue
Pick one or two things vs. Doing 20 things.

What’s worked best for you?

Content marketing?
Google?
Amazon Ads?

Most people don’t invest in their strength enough before they plateau. They assume a marketing channel has plateaued much earlier than it has in fact.
Look at your calling
Look at your natural interest.

Some people are just more into writing, social media, video or outbound selling.

It could be a book or a webinar. Aaron is a book person.

Any passion or enthusiasm helps because it takes a lot of work and time.

This could take 6-18 months to grow.
Get good at selling!
A lot of people aren’t comfortable with the word “sales” - but it’s a skill you must have.

It’s just a skill - helping people make decisions.

Salespeople include Mother Theresa, JFK; Elon Musk.
B2B Sales / Building Your First Sales Team 
A lot of people won’t be a good fit for a sales team.

It can take months or longer to begin to build a team.
Phase Zero - CEO salesperson
In Silicon Valley, a lot of founders don’t want to be part of selling.

This is a huge mistake. The right ones try to be part of the first 20-30 sales.

Then they get tired and hire a salesperson.
Phase 1 - Business Development Rep
Junior person who is there to take inbound calls or outbound prospecting

So you have a junior person who is prospecting and one senior who closes.

Of course, they will often fail -  you’ll normally know within 30-60 days.
Phase 2 - Promote that person or hire
Once you’ve got that rep in place, you can promote that person or hire another.

So you now have a junior and two senior people
Phase 3 - Hire a team leader 
They are normally best at optimizing what is working.

It’s a different skill set and personality to build from scratch.
Do the time
Building a sales team can be 2-3 years long!

We hear so much about “overnight successes” but we don’t see the 10 years before that.
Forcing Functions (e.g., speak & publish to crystallize value) 
We all have resistance.

Some people deal with stress by freezing like a rabbit in the headlights.

Others are like a rabid dog!

Forcing functions create situations that mean you can’t get away with this!

Making public declarations with deadlines help

For example:

Aaron put a post on Facebook that he was going to run a workshop.
If you take investor money, you can’t just have a relaxed lifestyle business now. That’s another classic forcing function in business.
Having kids was another one for Aaron - he was forced to increase revenue and he upped his income 11X.
If you want to get fit,