Startup Hypeman: The GOAT to Market Show

After almost a year of doing seemingly everything virtually, I think it's safe to say that many of us have Zoom Fatigue. Zoom and other video conferencing went from a tool to hold business meetings to how we celebrate birthdays, holidays, happy hours, and hangouts with friends. For me personally, I feel like my eyeballs are about to fall out. That's why I was excited to speak with Volley CEO Josh...

Nearly every company faces a critical moment early on where they realize what they originally came up with isn't exactly what's best for the market or for their own growth, and as a result, they pivot. Usually, this is a slight product change. In Jellyvision's case, it was an entire overhaul of an already-successful business model. After years of doing well as an agency, they realized if they real...

You know that part of the conversation asks, "What kind of results should I expect?" How do you respond? Especially if what you sell doesn't have a clear ROI. Tom Pisello has dedicated most of his career to cracking the value equation in modern selling, to the extent that he's known as 'The ROI Guy'. He also might actually be The Most Interesting Man In The World. Not just because he looks like th...

2020 certainly rocked all of us, and as we begin 2021 we're still in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic. And whether your business closed, lost revenue, or experienced growth, I think we can all agree as entrepreneurs that the pandemic forced changes in our respective companies. If you're a company that's been through Alex Batdorf's women-only Get Shit Done! accelerator, then you didn't fall victi...

One of the most naive mistakes entrepreneurs make is thinking that they can just 'go live' and all of a sudden people will know their product exists and start using it. That strategy works 0% of the time. Just like when going out to party, first you 'pre-game', when putting a product in market you have to drive interest during pre-launch. Buddhi Founder Kathleen Brown figured out a way, in the mid...

We all wish we could just charge more, don't we? Well, turns out we can. You just need to have the right strategy to pull it off. That means understanding your industry, your customer, your product, and how the three all relate to one another. Startupsales.io founder Adam Springer has helped a number of startups refine their sales processes and raise their pricing. This week he steps to the mic to...

Most conversations in B2B sales are about how you sell to the person you're speaking with. Ask them the right questions, learn their pains, needs, and goals, give them pricing, send them proposals, etc. There is A TON of content in this area. The oft-overlooked part is how to navigate a multi-stakeholder deal. Most enterprise, and many non-enterprise, sales include a main point-of-contact, influen...

Shakespeare said 'To be, or not to be? That is the question.' But if he lived today he'd probably say 'Freemium or Free Trial? That is the question.' Plenty of companies have tried one or tried both and failed, not fully realizing the economics of each, and what conditions better enable one acquisition strategy versus the other. To help unpack HOW to figure this out, I welcome the Prophet of Prici...

Want to have lasting success in a marketplace economy? You better figure out your SEO strategy. And, I don't mean just throw a bunch of money at an ethereal concept known as SEO. I mean knowing exactly what levers to pull, how much patience you're truly willing to have, and being willing to get it wrong along the way. That's how GreenPal CEO Bryan Clayton has taken the bootstrapped lawn care maint...

We're back with SEASON 15! To kick-off, we're talking marketplaces. Most marketplaces are labor-driven — they use technology to connect people to a particular service in an efficient way. The operative word here is PEOPLE. Many marketplace platforms have developed bad reputations for caring only about 1 group of people, the customers, while ignoring and treating poorly the other group, the labor....

We've reached our season finale and boy oh boy do I have a doozy for you. With the U.S. Presidential election less than a month away, I thought the perfect conclusion to this season would be to talk about the intersection of marketing and politics. Jason Voiovich is an entrepreneur, fractional CMO, and creator of the Marketer In Chief project, where he analyzes every U.S. President through the len...

You've heard of Linkedin, but have you heard of Spoke? You know Facebook, but do you remember Friendster? What about Tesla vs. Fisker? Oftentimes when we analyze what propels a company to success, we say things like "Facebook had this, therefore any company who has this should be successful". But that's flawed logic. What about the companies who also had that same thing and weren't as successful?...

In part 2 of my conversation with Sean, we dig into the 4 specific types of events, exploring what Facebook did that Friendster didn't, How YouTube outlasted Revver, and more. Find Sean online: Social Media: @seanammirati Today's episode is brought to you by Sales Hacker. The world's smartest community of forward-thinking B2B professionals. Grab their latest expert-created articles, webinars, and...

You know to ask about budget. You know to ask about timeline. You know to ask about what they are looking for in a solution. But when you're selling your product, do you know how to go beyond these surface area "100-level" questions? If you can, you've opened the door to learning about your prospect's true thoughts and opinions, and most importantly their emotions. This is where your 400-level que...

How do you respond when a prospect starts talking about your competitor on the phone? When you've run 4,000 demos like David Abrams has, you're bound to encounter that at least a few times and figure out what to say. Demio has learned enough along the way to the tune of over 3k active customers who have collectively run over 1 million webinars on their platform, and a team of 22. As a bootstrapped...

We've all had those moments where it looks like a sale is going to happen, and happen quick. And then...silence. Crickets. The inevitable slowdown occurs. Sometimes it takes you by surprise, and other times you're expecting it because you know you work with slow-moving organisations. Prezentor found this happening again, and again...and again. So they took a step back, looked at their funnel, and...

There are two types of founders: Those who love to sell, and those who think sales is the devil's creation. Whichever camp you fall in, there comes a point where you have to leap from being responsible for customer acquisition, and hiring/onboarding your first sales rep or VP. How do you make it less of a leap and more of a skip? My longtime friend Tony Lenhart, known as The Sales Drummer, and Par...

Want to become a better listener? Or a better improviser when meetings take a hard left? Or become all around more productive? Try learning a new language. That's what Polytripper Cofounder and hyper-polyglot himself Mohan Embar says. As someone who has learned 8 languages and currently on his 9th, he steps to the microphone in this week's episode to share the rationale behind why learning a new l...

"We're really focused on revenue growth right now, so we're not as focused on core values." Believe it or not, that's actually what a lot of companies tell their employees. But what good are your core values if you only value them when it's convenient? Erin Diehl's business improv training company Improve It! is a graduate of the Goldman Sachs 10k Small Businesses program and has worked with the l...

You can run facebook ads, you can do cold call and cold email campaigns, and you can boost your SEO. But one of the most effective, and cost-efficient, ways to grow your lead flow, customer base, and overall interest in your brand is by tapping into your existing network. That's how Bilingual Bridges has expanded from the U.S. into Europe, Asia, and Central America in its first 3 years. Their CEO...

Every company goes through that period where they actually push people AWAY from their website, because it doesn't accurately reflect who they are and what they do. I know that was the case for Startup Hypeman's website until recently. Wicked Reports was in this boat as well, where they found that through piecemeal updates to their website over time, it produced crazy high bounce rates and confuse...

We're back with a brand new season! And kicking us off making his record-setting FOURTH appearance on the show is my close friend Jason Bay, or JBay for short. JBay has spent the last 3 years testing prospecting strategies himself, interviewing sales leaders and top SDRs at companies, and leading sales reps of all kinds through prospecting boot camps. The 3 primary channels he revolves around are...

We are gearing up for Season 14, but in the meantime, enjoy one of our favorites from Season 13! Buyer Experience is all about making it as easy as possible for the buyer to make a purchase decision. Typically that comes with the territory of optimizing the best parts of your sales process and over-providing value. For ClearCover, a company that has raised over $100 million and has 150+ employees...

We are gearing up for Season 14, but in the meantime, enjoy one of our favorites from Season 12! As much as online ads and click-bait might try to convince you, customer acquisition is NOT one-size-fits-all. In most cases it takes a little trial and a lot of error to get it right for your specific industry, market, product, and use case. Zinda.xyz Founder & CEO Deepa Kartha is my guest this we...

I didn't think it was possible, but I found someone who is as passionate about storytelling as I am. Enter: Michele Kelly, Cofounder & CEO of K+L Storytellers, a corporate storytelling agency focused on brand development and content creation. There was magic in the air in this conversation, as we got deep into storytelling philosophy, strategy, and execution. If you leave this episode not conv...