The Growth and Influence Podcast

Ankit Dhorajiya started his consulting company not with a vendor focus, but a focus on customers and problems. How's that working out? Several years in, he's never had a customer leave...And he's worked with some big customers, including the Indian government, where he helped deliver clean drinking water to 112,000,000 people. Don't miss this episode where Ankit shares the philosophy that has made his company so successful.

Grant McLarnon sold a software company to Microsoft and a services company to KPMG. Today, he is the CRO of a Microsoft channel partner undergoing the shift from services to software. Oh - and that company is publicly traded. Grant has unique and rare experiences and insights that are incredibly valuable to anyone operating in a large tech ecosystem like Microsoft. Don't miss this one.

Tony DiSanza shares insights on how AI is creating significant changes in the business world, particularly within large tech ecosystems. What growth channels have the best returns on effort? How is this going to change in a world where AI is cannibalizing consulting fees? Tony emphasizes the importance of adapting to AI disruption and the need for strategic approaches to business growth. Discover how firms can thrive by leveraging business technology and embracing a process focus.Consulting firms and ISVs operating in large tech ecosystems: Do You Have the Right Strategies and Systems in Place to Generate Consistent, Qualified Pipeline? Find out here: https://getprofitautomation.com/obrb

Channel partners are behind on AI, and it's going to hurt their businesses. Here's one example: this company used AI to increase their RFP win rate from ~5% to ~25%...While responding to far more of them. The process for doing so is just one of the high value topics of conversation in this episode. Josh Santiago is a rare animal - a Chief Strategy Officer at a channel consulting firm. The insights he shares in this episode may convince you that every firm - even boutiques - need a Chief Strategy Officer. If you're a channel partner who wants to win more RFPs...Or if you're at all afraid that you're behind the AI adoption curve...Listen to this episode right now.

Chris Carter lost an SAP partner company and was ready to call it quits. After having to lay off his entire staff... And watch what he had worked so hard to build go up in smoke when one customer made a bad decision...He didn't know if the business was for him. But he came back - mostly because SAP leadership wanted him back in their partner channel. Today, he leads one of SAP's premier consulting partner companies, Approyo, and has pipeline producing partnerships that most channel partners would give their right arm for. How did he come back from his crushing loss? What does he have to say about AI in tech partner channels and how it's going to transform the business of consulting? Listen now to find out. Consulting firms and ISVs operating in large tech ecosystems: Do You Have the Right Strategies and Systems in Place to Generate Consistent, Qualified Pipeline? Find out here: https://getprofitautomation.com/obrb

The worst mistake you can make with nurture emails is to not write them. But for those who do write nurture emails, there's a fatal mistake most people make...And it goes hand in hand with the reason conversions are low across the entire marketing funnel. If you write nurture emails (or you don't, but you know you should), don't miss this episode.

Almost every B2B business knows one-to-one sales. Few have unlocked the power of one-to-many sales. In this episode, I break down the details of a webinar I wrote with Adam Robinson, the founder of Retention.com and RB2B. This webinar sold ~ $30,000 in self-serve annual SaaS subscription the first two times Adam presented it, and sold 15% of the room every time he presented it. Listen to learn more about how you persuade a large audience to take action over a webinar or similar presentation.

You want your reader to take action when they read your email. But how do you get someone to spend the time and energy doing something...When the only tool you have is a block of text they're going to read? The answer is in psychology. If you want to influence someone, you must understand what already influences them. Then, you craft language that aligns with the way they see the world.That language can be aligned with either the positive or the negative ways they see the world, but it must be aligned with strongly held views. We'll go deeper in this episode.

It's common knowledge that B2B prospects won't talk to you or your sales team until they're 70 - 75% or more through their decision-making process. Meanwhile, B2B SaaS companies are spending 75 - 107% of new logo ARR on marketing, with most of it going to top of funnel lead generation. See the problem? There's an enormous gap between the money we dump into lead generation, and the step where we actually talk to these leads. This gap is enormous both in terms of the steps a lead must take to reach a sales call... And in the time that expires while a lead is in this gap. Let's talk about how to shorten this gap, and influence leads who are in it so they reach a sales call more frequently, and in a more qualified state.

Do your prospects feel like victims when you market to them? Is that what you want them to feel? This episode explores the meaning behind the word "solution", and what happens when we market our products as if it is going to solve a problem (which they almost never do - they are only a tool the prospect can use to solve the problem). Listen for some angles on this that you may not have considered before - and what it all means for your marketing.

This is a work in public episode. I started Profit Automation in Feb 2023 without having a complete vision for what I was building. I had been fired from my job in tech sales, and I knew I wanted to work in an environment where I had more control over my own destiny again... And that's about all I knew. In this episode, I share revenue details, what I've learned, and my own mindset, attitude, and execution strengths and limitations.

My 15-year old son thinks he may want to be a pilot... But he doesn't want to talk to my friend who just went through the process and crash landed a plane. He's just going to "get online and sign up." What has technology done to our muscles of resourcefulness and creation? It's paved the way to make many of our tasks more effortless, but it has also made us less capable of achieving anything that doesn't have a 3-step process and a submit button. In this episode, we talk about the lost art of resourcefulness.

In a world where your prospect won’t talk to you until they’re 70% done with their buying journey, and 77% of prospects won’t engage until after their own research... What we’re doing today in B2B SaaS is borderline insane. Bland, banal content created by a content team whose job is not to convert, but to produce volumes of content. The smartest marketers are creating ONE TO MANY selling opportunities. They do this by creating amazing content—but it’s not just a traditional blog post with a “Book a Demo” button on the top of the page. It’s not a recorded webinar that hopes to simply build some brand affinity so the prospect will remember them when they’re ready to engage. This episode will show you what they’re doing instead.

If there was a lead channel for your SaaS business where leads would: 1. Close 80% more often 2. Be more profitable and have MUCH lower CAC 3. Churn less often (probably) Would you want to use it? Of course you would! That channel is referrals. Jay Abraham, one of the most successful living marketers, identified 125 ways to get referrals, and says that using 3-4 of them consistently will change a business. Most companies are using 0, and nowhere is this more true than in SaaS. Let's talk about how getting more referrals.

B2B marketing, especially in the tech and SaaS industry, is shifting toward B2C. If you're a marketer, you've heard it you whole career - B2C marketers are better at getting attention, placing products, and generating sales. But B2B was a different beast, and comparisons seemed academic and pointless. Technology and social media have finally reached a tipping point where B2B buyers are influenced more by B2C style content than by B2B. B2B marketers MUST shift the way they do things if they want to stay relevant and grow successful companies. This episode will talk about 3 critical shifts: 1. Selling Results 2. Capturing Attention 3. Bundling Info Products

Today's episode is about personal branding - specifically mine. Over the last 18 months, I've been working on my brand to make it reflect the impact I really want to make outside of my personal life. I've learned that you can know who you are, but be bad at sharing that with others. This episode is a public definition of my brand. If you think that's weird, maybe it is - but I'd love your feedback. Leave a comment if you have an opinion.

Want to see the video version of this podcast? See it here: https://youtu.be/Ta_TdcBGng0 I'm making a predication that a marketing and growth tactic that only a very small number of companies are doing right now... Will quickly become a massive trend in how SaaS companies market to and acquire customers. If you're not paying attention to this, you should be.

For visuals, find this episode on YouTube also: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSYui1FCDhSGFlZbVMi6CtQ It's all about awareness. Most marketers are familiar with the awareness scale, especially as it applies to B2C marketing. It's essential to marketing to B2B prospects also. But is there an aggregate awareness level in your market as a whole that you should be aware of? And what does this have to do with the effectiveness of your branding efforts? Listen to this episode to find out.

The fundamental rules that SaaS marketing has followed to drive leads into the sales pipeline (SLG)... Or persuade free users to upgrade to paid subscriptions (PLG)... No longer work anymore. For over a decade, SaaS has enjoyed an environment where the rules other industries had follow didn't apply here. But as almost-free capital has disappeared and scrutiny on profitability and unit economics has created new definitions for success... SaaS is going to have to start using the principles that companies in other industries use to win. In this episode, I'm going to teach 3 critical keys for converting mildly-engaged leads into the next step in the customer journey.

In the last episode, I did a teardown of the emails a company called Mouseflow sends to users who sign up for a free account of their product. In this episode, I'm going to walk through three emails I wrote to demonstrate the principles I talked about during the teardown.

In this episode, I do a teardown of a new user email flow from a real company. Mouseflow is a SaaS company who runs a PLG motion. That stands for "Product-Led Growth," and it means the company uses a free trial or a free subscription level as a primary way of attracting users. The communications, usually and mostly by email, that new users get, are a critical piece of the company's efforts to convert free users to paid users, which they have to do to make money. The average free to paid user conversion rate across the industry, according to the data I've seen, is 1% - 3%. That's a huge problem, especially in 2024 when, unlike times past, the definition of success for software companies includes being profitable. In this episode, I'm breaking down Mouseflow's new user flow and talking about where I see opportunities for improvement.

Pipeline is the problem for almost every SaaS marketing org right now in 2024. Most SaaS CMOs or Marketing/Demand Gen leaders have a lead database but aren't seeing nearly enough leads turn into meaningful pipeline. If this is you, you might be going back to the well with the idea of increasing the volume or quality of leads coming into the top of the funnel. Or, you might be hammering away at this lead database to create more pipeline, but it's just not working. This episode will walk through steps you can use to move more of your lead database into the pipeline as meaningful sales opportunities. Today's personal development angle: People don't care about you ... they care about themselves. Follow Andrew's Socials: LinkedIn | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | X (fmrly Twitter) | Threads | Profit Automation

A recent New York Times article attempted to cast the personal development coaching industry as a predatory, shark-infested place that just wants to rob people of their life savings. In this episode, I share my take on: The insinuations made by the NYT article The possibility of bad actors in the coaching industry Whether the industry should be regulated Follow Andrew's Socials: ⁠LinkedIn⁠ | ⁠YouTube⁠ | ⁠Facebook⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠X (fmrly Twitter)⁠ | ⁠Threads⁠ | ⁠Profit Automation⁠

I recently spent 6 days straight, 14+ hours each day, at an event called Date with Destiny, run by Tony Robbins. I was studying my notes this morning (which literally fill half a large journal, every page full)... And I came across the topic for today's episode. It's the "cycle of meaning" - how we create meaning and, ultimately, how we create the conditions we experience in our lives. Here it is: Stimulus/ the world --> The mind --> Feeling/Emotion --> Behaviors/Actions --> Life Conditions and Results Guess which element of this cycle most of us spend 90% of our time and energy on? Hint: it's the worst one. Listen to the episode to find out which one it is. Follow Andrew's Socials: ⁠LinkedIn⁠ | ⁠YouTube⁠ | ⁠Facebook⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠X (fmrly Twitter)⁠ | ⁠Threads⁠ | ⁠Profit Automation⁠

Once an industry full of bold and creative innovators, the tech/SaaS industry has become characterized by its copy and paste business models and its obligatory social values. This brand of conformity to industry mores has a terrible impact on any company's ability to create a powerful emotional response with its audience and build a long-term business that extends beyond the comfortable confines of its own neighborhood. It's time for a SaaS industry with authentic brands that can gain the trust of their markets and drive long-term profitable value. Follow Andrew's Socials: ⁠LinkedIn⁠ | ⁠YouTube⁠ | ⁠Facebook⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠X (fmrly Twitter)⁠ | ⁠Threads⁠ | ⁠Profit Automation⁠

If you've been listening to The Growth and Influence Podcast for a while now, you have seen it go through two phases. We started with the goal of talking about Personal Development and Marketing, and the gray area of conflicting values between them. Phase 1 (episodes 1 - 10) saw a heavy emphasis on personal development, which I enjoyed talking about immensely. Phase 2 (episodes 11 - 16) was a shift to the emphasis being almost completely on marketing. This episode discusses the future of the Growth and Influence Podcast, especially where it will focus more consistently. Follow Andrew's Socials: ⁠LinkedIn⁠ | ⁠YouTube⁠ | ⁠Facebook⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠X (fmrly Twitter)⁠ | ⁠Threads⁠ | ⁠Profit Automation⁠

Lead nurture fails to meet the pipeline generation needs of SaaS orgs in 2024. Here's why:  🚫 Low and slow lead conversion rates 🚫 Inefficient use of resources 🚫 Hard to measure and report ROI In this episode, we'll talk about why, especially in the SMB and midmarket segments, replacing lead nurture with direct response marketing funnels creates the following:  ✅ Higher conversion rates and faster revenue realization ✅ Constant improvement by optimizing a simple system, rather than a complex one ✅ Immediate ROI through high-impact campaigns that require fewer resources.  ✅ Speed and efficiency, clear payback metrics, and cost-effective programs Follow Andrew's Socials: ⁠LinkedIn⁠ | ⁠YouTube⁠ | ⁠Facebook⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠X (fmrly Twitter)⁠ | ⁠Threads⁠ | ⁠Profit Automation⁠

Instead of doing traditional lead nurture with a set of leads, we tried something more dramatic 🎩… And the results demonstrate why lead nurture doesn’t work anymore (and maybe never did). The bottom line is that lead nurture today is acting more as a placeholder until an SDR can call 🤯… Rather than a process that delivers qualified leads into the sales pipeline by itself. This business had been doing a more traditional nurture approach, sending a regular newsletter to its subscriber list. The newsletter had an innocuous CTA at the bottom which might have been delivering leads into its other free content, but not converting them to a sales call. We took a more direct approach, and the results demonstrate that this is what you should be doing instead of lead nurture, especially in your smaller segments (SMB, lower commercial/mid-market). We sent an email sequence that didn’t nurture, it sold the concept of the sales call. It was highly successful. Those calls closed $60,000 in three weeks. We scripted, promoted, and ran a webinar that sold the concept of the sales call. Those calls closed $50,000 in a short time. These programs can be evergreen (same emails, same webinar, same results, over and over) if your subscriber base is large enough or growing fast enough. Nurture marketing is complex, its performance is difficult to evaluate, and it’s not the right play for most organizations whose goal is to move more leads into the sales pipeline. With the approach I took with this company, you don’t need tens or hundreds of pieces of content. It’s not hard to align marketing and sales - the leads come to the sales team with uniform qualification levels, instead of being all over the map (leading to complaints about low-quality leads). You don’t have to do this across multiple channels to start with. You don’t have to rely on a complicated and probably incorrect lead scoring system. Marketers are already playing the game on hard mode in today’s environment. Consider simplifying how you convert your leads to pipeline. Follow Andrew's Socials: ⁠LinkedIn⁠ | ⁠YouTube⁠ | ⁠Facebook⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠X (fmrly Twitter)⁠ | ⁠Threads⁠ | ⁠Profit Automation⁠

B2B SaaS webinars all tend to follow the same script. Marketers see everyone else doing it the same way, and they assume it's based on a SaaS marketing strategy that's been perfected. Actually, these webinars are only effective in a brand-building effort that is content with results later - maybe much later. They info-dump on the attendees, and then trust that if any of that info becomes important to those people at some future time, they'll consider the company doing the webinar for a solution. But what if the bar didn't have to be so low? What if it were possible to run a single webinar, over and over again with new leads, that consistently moved people to the action you wanted them to take - whether that was enrolling as a customer, converting from free to paid, or getting into a highly qualified call with a salesperson? Those results are possible. This podcast will show you some of the principles I used to create a webinar that produced amazing results for a company that was struggling in 2023. Follow Andrew's Socials: ⁠LinkedIn⁠ | ⁠YouTube⁠ | ⁠Facebook⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠X (fmrly Twitter)⁠ | ⁠Threads⁠ | ⁠Profit Automation⁠

B2B SaaS marketing has been mired in inefficient methods that burned through capital while pursuing growth at all costs. These B2B SaaS marketing strategies that grew the company as fast as possible were grounded in the fact that capital was cheap and abundant, which was in turn grounded in inflated valuations propped up by P/E ratios. That all changed in 2022/2023. In this episode, I report on recent conversation I had with a CMO who shared the opinion that marketing lost its way during the "growth at all costs" period, and some suggestions on how to find the way again. Follow Andrew's Socials: ⁠LinkedIn⁠ | ⁠YouTube⁠ | ⁠Facebook⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠X (fmrly Twitter)⁠ | ⁠Threads⁠ | ⁠Profit Automation⁠

Too many SaaS companies mistakenly think that B2B marketing has to be impersonal and focused only on business benefits and business value. In reality, your buyers are human beings, and they are as influenced by emotions and personal motivations at work as they are away from work. If you’re not marketing in this way, you’re getting lost in a sea of messages that simply don’t resonate because they don't mean anything to your prospects. Follow Andrew's Socials: ⁠LinkedIn⁠ | ⁠YouTube⁠ | ⁠Facebook⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠X (fmrly Twitter)⁠ | ⁠Threads⁠ | ⁠Profit Automation⁠

Life has never been more predictable, more "under control," than it is right now. There are good things that come as a result of this predictable control, and there are bad things. Reality - that we can never control the things that will matter most - becomes something we avoid when we become addicted to knowing beforehand. Our greatest life is lived in the actions we take where we don't know the outcome ahead of time. Listen to this episode to go deeper. Follow Andrew's Socials: ⁠LinkedIn⁠ | ⁠YouTube⁠ | ⁠Facebook⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠X (fmrly Twitter)⁠ | ⁠Threads⁠ | ⁠Profit Automation⁠

Today, we're talking about the lack of qualified leads in SaaS marketing. SaaS Marketers: Stop doing this: Putting out content that's tangentially related to your product, and then hitting every opt-in with emails that assume they're going to buy tomorrow. This is ineffective because the content is misaligned with the action and what it actually means. Putting out content that's all about your product, and wondering why nobody reads it. This is ineffective because people aren’t on the internet to read about you - they’re there for themselves. To generate more sales qualified leads, do what this episode talks about. Follow Andrew's Socials: ⁠LinkedIn⁠ | ⁠YouTube⁠ | ⁠Facebook⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠X (fmrly Twitter)⁠ | ⁠Threads⁠ | ⁠Profit Automation⁠

Think about your capacity to feel. If you were to live your greatest life, what would that capacity need to be, on a scale of 1 - 10? Most people would agree that it would be a high number. But that's not what "most people" are doing. Instead, they're numbing - decreasing their ability to feel. There's a way to stop this, and we'll discuss it on this episode. We also explore how to market to a numb audience (which is what most of us have today). Send me a voice note with your answer to the question: If you were to live your greatest life, what would that capacity need to be, on a scale of 1 - 10? Why? I'd love to hear from you. Follow Andrew's Socials: ⁠LinkedIn⁠ | ⁠YouTube⁠ | ⁠Facebook⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠X (fmrly Twitter)⁠ | ⁠Threads⁠ | ⁠Profit Automation⁠

You may understand that human beings relate to the world via stories - but do you know how the structure of a story - specifically, the sub-elements of a story called the "A Story" and the "B Story" - hold the key to happiness and achievement in your life? Give this episode a listen to learn how to focus on the things in your life that will give you long-term happiness and fulfillment, and maybe you'll even achieve more while you're at it. Follow Andrew's Socials: ⁠LinkedIn⁠ | ⁠YouTube⁠ | ⁠Facebook⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠X (fmrly Twitter)⁠ | ⁠Threads⁠ | ⁠Profit Automation⁠

Two similar terms, two completely different ways of being. Let's explore how pain and fear can push us in either of these directions, based on how we choose to deal with them. Follow Andrew's Socials: ⁠LinkedIn⁠ | ⁠YouTube⁠ | ⁠Facebook⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠X (fmrly Twitter)⁠ | ⁠Threads⁠ | ⁠Profit Automation⁠

Integrity in your marketing and selling. Have you ever been tempted to compromise the integrity for results? If you are a marketer or a seller, you’re going to want to pay attention to this. We’re going to talk about something today that will create or destroy your personal power to market and sell effectively. If you get this wrong, not only will you end up with years, decades, even an entire career that you look back on with regret… But you'll also never achieve what you're truly capable of achieving. What is this thing you have to get right? Jump in and find out. Follow Andrew's Socials: ⁠LinkedIn⁠ | ⁠YouTube⁠ | ⁠Facebook⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠X (fmrly Twitter)⁠ | ⁠Threads⁠ | ⁠Profit Automation⁠

Do you feel worthy? What does that mean to you? Does it refer to your standing among your peers? Does it refer to your achievements? Let's unpack this. Ed Mylett asked Jewel about this on a recent podcast episode, and this is my contribution to that conversation. Follow Andrew's Socials: ⁠LinkedIn⁠ | ⁠YouTube⁠ | ⁠Facebook⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠X (fmrly Twitter)⁠ | ⁠Threads⁠ | ⁠Profit Automation⁠

Our language has a powerful influence on us, and on others. The language we use with ourselves can persuade us that we are noble, or that we are nothing. It can persuade others to step into an elevated destiny, or it can deceive or belittle them. This episode explores the power each of us wields over ourselves and others, and powerfully invites you to "watch your language." Follow Andrew's Socials: ⁠LinkedIn⁠ | ⁠YouTube⁠ | ⁠Facebook⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠X (fmrly Twitter)⁠ | ⁠Threads⁠ | ⁠Profit Automation⁠

There are experiences from your past that are still worming around inside of you, creating limiting beliefs or internal conflict and preventing you from living the life you really want to live. Why does this happen, and how can we overcome it? This episode of the Growth and Influence podcast explores the deep fears that each of us harbor, and how experiences that bring those fears to the surface creates a disturbance that we can get caught in for hours, days, weeks, years ... even generations. We'll also talk about how to make sure this doesn't happen so you can live a happier, more successful, more creative life. Let's go. Follow Andrew's Socials: ⁠LinkedIn⁠ | ⁠YouTube⁠ | ⁠Facebook⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠X (fmrly Twitter)⁠ | ⁠Threads⁠ | ⁠Profit Automation⁠

Welcome to the Growth & Influence podcast. I'm Andrew Schultz. In this intro episode, we'll talk about two conflicting powers in my life - Coaching and Marketing. Why do they conflict? You'll have to listen to the episode to find out. We take this conflict and we extend it into a principled discussion about goal setting, and why we do long-term goal setting about the person we want to be and the life we want to create completely wrong. There's a new angle here I hadn't heard before, and I bet you haven't either. Let's jump in. Follow Andrew's Socials: ⁠LinkedIn⁠ | ⁠YouTube⁠ | ⁠Facebook⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠X (fmrly Twitter)⁠ | ⁠Threads⁠ | ⁠Profit Automation⁠