10 sales tactics that work:

How to run a company (in priority order):

1: Define a crystal clear north star

Great companies know their destination.

Everyone rowing in one direction.

The best north star? A SIMPLE, measurable metric.

Get it right, and watch the magic unfold! 💫

2: Hire uncomfortably good people

Ah, my favorite line!

Hire people you have no right to hire.

Who are so good it makes you nervous.

Who force everyone to step up their game.

Always level up 🦾

3: Create a culture of urgency

Nothing is more powerful than a group of people making every day count 🔥⚡️🚨

4: Make sure no one gets blocked

You’re paying good people good money.

Make sure they don’t get stuck!

Demotivating for them 🤦

Disastrous for the bottom line.

What to look for in a cofounder:

Oh boy, this is a big one!

Why?

The #1 cause of death in startups is 🥁🥁

Co-founder issues!

Who you pick as co-founder is perhaps THE most important decision you’ll make.

I have a TON of advice on the topic, so let’s dive in 👇

The MOST important thing to know:

Your cofounder must fit in the overlap of TWO venn diagrams:

1/ Personality fit

2/ Ability to execute

A pitfall founders make: choosing ONLY ONE.

Why?

> Choose personality fit w/out ability to execute, and there will be an inevitable reckoning when one cofounder feels they are contributing disproportionately.

> Choose ability to execute w/out personality fit, and the relationship strain grows until it becomes paralyzing.

Someone worthy of a cofounder title must be a unicorn 🦄

ie. they must have both!

Having both results in a DEEP MUTUAL RESPECT amongst each other.

And of course, there are some nuances to both of these venn diagrams.

Let’s double click on each one:

YCombinator is not worth it, a thread:

These days, I get asked by founders all the time: “Should I do YC (YCombinator)?”

My answer used to be: “Probably not worth it, but if you really want to, sure.”

Today, given what YC has become, my answer is a hard: “No.”

Here’s why 👇

Before we dig in, a note on my motivation.

Some think my recent tweets are marketing stunts.

The truth: there’s nothing that pisses me off more than the Mob Sh*t that goes on in Silicon Valley.

My mission of empowering the next generation of entrepreneurs drives all my work.

Ok, now to YC…

This thread is long, but here’s the main takeaway:

YC might have started off pure.

But money, power, and greed have corrupted it.

Today, YC is a lottery factory capturing 10%+ from founders with little concern about the individuals going through the program.

The problem: founders new to Silicon Valley think of YC as a MUST.

This is the narrative that needs to be put to bed.

And, I’ll go one step further, it is a MUST AVOID.

Why?

How to build a sales team:

To start, a note of credit to the great Jim Herbold from Box.

He was my hands-on mentor for many years. Bolt sales would not exist without him.

Much of this is learned wisdom from him.

Ok, here we go 👇

1/ Close the first deals yourself, end-to-end

It’s impossible to now how to construct a sales team without first knowing how to conduct a sale.

Some founders try to hire before this step.

Doing so is skipping a crucial step of getting intimate with your product and customers.

2/ Document the learnings

At Bolt we wrote a 50+ page sales playbook which included
- Email scripts
- Cold call scripts
- FAQ and Rebuttals
- Negotiating tactics
- Closing tactics

With this handy, new salespeople ramp 3X-5X faster.

3/ When ready, always hire in pairs

If you hire just one salesperson and they can’t sell your product, you’re in trouble.

Why?

You don’t know if the problem is the person or the product!

Hire two, and you have a point of comparison.

Over the last 72 hrs, countless founders reached out in private to thank me for standing up.

My realization: VCs don’t just dominate the capital, they also dominate Twitter.

We need to balance the scales.

For founders, here’s how I’ve grown my Twitter with minimal time 👇👇👇

Before I dive in… I’m challenging myself!

I started writing this at 8p ET on the DOT.

Let’s see how fast I can get it out.

Here we go 👇

Filling the queue 📜

I use Buffer (.com) to queue up tweets.

For 2-3 hours at the beginning of each month, I meditate and fill it up 🧘

My focus: business insights and wisdom.

Once you get flowing, it keeps on flowing.

Packing the punch 👊

Some people think Twitter is for 280 characters.

I’ve found the opposite to be true: it’s the most effective long-form platform on the planet.

Instead of a single blog post, each section is its own tweet and can be shared.

Maximum momentum!

I try to do long form 1-3 times per week.

I find that if I’m in a meditated state and have picked a good topic, the words just flow out.

These “tweet storms” take about 1-2 hours to get out.

PRO TIP: keep a "list of topics" and any time you think of one, write it down.

1 Cold Email, 10 closed deals

This email is based on “actions’ your prospect took. These actions might be a product launch, a new offer, a new blog, a press release…any action that might represent an opportunity for you to help.

Having action gives you a reason to email and

makes the email itself feel less cold and unsolicited.

You have to do some leg work in order to find relevant actions you can email them about.

Here is one way to find “actions” that you can use as a reason for your email:

Use LinkedIn or a Google Search to find businesses

you’re interested in working with. Compile a list of the names of the businesses, web address, and contact information of decision makers.

Identify potential needs of these businesses and how you can fill those needs. Can you write blog posts? Articles? Facebook Ads? Video

Scripts? Emails or Sales Copy?

Use a Google Search to determine “new” things that have shown up on their website lately. You can also use social media or LinkedIn to see what these businesses have been up to recently.

To do this, type “site:URL” into a Google search, using

the URL of the business you are looking to work with.

Next, select tools, and pick a recent time frame (1 month usually works well) to see what new things they’ve been working on or releasing.

Skim the search results for recent happenings, events, launches, or publications

The essence of Customer Relationship Management is to segment your customers as high value customers and low value customers, develop systems and procedures to take good care of the high value customers. 1/n

The belief is that 20% of the customers give 80% of the business and hence need to be nurtured.

Now where have I seen this philosophy being applied?

2/n

Let me roll the years back. I lived in a rural area. My father, being the local Executive Engineer in Electricity Board, was considered to be a mini VIP and in turn a high value customer. 3/n

We had nearby a tailor, named Aruchami. This guy had a small tailoring shop with a single sewing machine. He will make personal visit to 10 or 15 important clients in the area, take measurements at our houses, collect the materials and deliver the finished dresses in person 4/n

A kind of customized personal service. Our work used to get precedence over the other relatively non affluent working class people, whom he used to run around in circles to the extend of positively discouraging them. 5/n

With digital advertising getting tougher and too many choices for consumers, it's important to have a website that is:

• story-first
• easy-to-navigate
• made to convert

If your grandma can't use it, you've already lost.

Here are 11 tips to build a high-converting site 👇

Have a compelling story and brand narrative on the homepage.

Your homepage should have a good balance of explaining WHO you are, WHY you exist, and WHAT you sell.

If someone doesn't go further, they should walk away with an understanding of all 3.

Focus on driving a customer journey.

Whether you're selling skincare or cookware, point the customer in the right direction with CTAs.

When merchandising, you should have a hierarchy of what you want your customer to buy. This helps reduce a customer's analysis/paralysis.

Incorporate social proof across the website & Google search results.

The latter: makes sure you stand apart in Google searches (search "non-toxic cookware" and you'll see)

The former: gives perspective from different POVs to potential customers.

Don't use full-bleed websites

From the data I've looked at, most people don't scroll when the website is full-bleed and you can't see the next section.

If you must, add a floating arrow or indicate there's another section to scroll into.

Always show there's more!

How to grow on Instagram reels?

I went from 1000 followers to 215,000 followers in 8 months and here is what I learnt!

If you're just starting out, this is a great time. With recent changes to the algorithm, Instagram is promoting smaller pages more than ever. (1/n)

1) Pick a niche. Something that hasn't been done before. Create your own style, the accounts that have grown the fastest have had a first mover advantage in their niche. (2/n)

2) Quantity over Quality. Trust me the algorithm loves small accounts. Even if the content is marginally good IG algorithm will promote it. Upload twice daily if possible until you get a viral video. This doesn't mean you compromise a lot on quality though. (3/n)

3) Trends. The algorithm understands trending music and heavily promotes videos on trending music! If you can use those trends with your niche. (4/n)

4) Now lets talk about Content:
4.1 Entertain as much as possible. No one comes to Instagram to learn. Package information with entertainment. (5/n)