I reached 3K people one by one, but the sale: $0!
Hey guys,
I'm Faruk, the founder of MonitUp.com. MonitUp tracks people's time, measures their productivity, and offers AI suggestions to be more productive.
As a tech guy for about 4 months, I've spent most of my time trying to sell on LinkedIn but the result is: $0.
My target audience: CEO, General Manager, Founder.
Company size: 10 - 500 employees.
With LinkedIn Sales Navigator, I call from different countries according to my target audience and send a connection request with a message.
To those who accept, I send a second message a week later, and if there is no response, I send a third message a month later.
Average number of people I've sent total connection requests to: 3K people.
Average number of people accepting my connection request: 1.3K.
Those who have not yet accepted my connection request: 1.7K people.
An average of 15 accepted the sales meeting.
7 of them have launched a free demo for the product.
4 of them asked for a quote.
As of today, the equivalent of this sales effort: $0
Are these numbers normal for B2B sales? Or something is wrong?
Few thoughts just from reading your post.
Are you sure you understand your segment well enough? Is your offer compelling ?
First:
The CEO/Founder of a +100 employees company is NOT focused at ALL on time tracking. They frankly don't give a shit, that's someone else's responsibility in the company. That guy is focused on driving growth and nothing else.
If you're not speaking to that, you will be ignored.
Second:
How well designed is your LinkedIn profile? If I can't take you serious from your profile picture or work history there's no way I'm gonna want to do business with you. Unless of course you are solving a painfully pressing issue at which point I don't care at all and I will engage.
3K messages to 15 meeting means that the problem you are solving is either not important or you are trying to reach the wrong people with the wrong message.
Hey Verdi,
You mentioned a good point.
Why am I reaching out to CEOs, Founders or Owners?
At first, I was reaching out to HR managers and meeting them. After a while, I realized this: HR managers already know that some employees are working with unproductive and they manage it somehow. Because he already pays the employee less or works more than usual and he thinks that if IK manager fires him, IK manager will not find someone similar to the same wages. And IK manager is trying to hide from the top management that that person is working less. That's why I realized that HR executives set up their own reigns within the company and they don't want certain things to be recorded.
MonitUp records the productive or unproductive employee and this data is collected entirely by the employee's computer. Therefore, the HR manager loses his power and does not prefer to use an application like MonitUp. For this reason, I expect the CEOs to reach out and direct me to the relevant person, and this is usually the case.
I realized that there is a problem with this strategy as well. When a downward recommendation is received from the top management, it does not seem to be welcomed by the HR manager. It is perceived as an order.
My LinkedIn profile is good for a technical person, but it may be insufficient for this industry. I would love to hear your comments: https://www.linkedin.com/in/farukdurak
Your profile looks good!
Then I'd suggest you might want to talk to either the COO or the CFO. The CEO's main focus every day all is day "how do I grow by X%". Cutting burn is not a pressing issue to them so you will find them slow to act.
COO's primary job is to make sure operations internally are running smoothly and keeping the ship efficient.
The CFO's primary job is to make sure the finances of the company are in good health.
Those two people daily have to report on how they're performing on those tasks to the CEO.
If the COO can say "I have implemented a time tracking tool and was able to increase our efficiency by 25% this quarter" then he will get rewarded.
If the CFO can say "We implemented this tool to measure underperforming employees and have cut out employee costs by 16% this quarter" then he will also get rewarded.
If the CEO says that the board, the board will respond: "Okay... good job.. but, how is growth going?"
That's how it is for most companies. Unless you're targeting a specific industry where the CEO's main growth driver is how efficient they are with spend (production type companies often fit in this).
Thank you for these great suggestions. I will try these.
Sometimes I think there is a problem with the product, but the numbers show that the rates of arranging meetings and starting demos with the people I actually reach are very low. That's why we can't even come to the product yet. It seems logical to try by changing the contacts I reach out to.
I checked out the website, and my 2 cents is that it needs to sell the product more. GIFs of how the AI suggests how to be more productive would be great. Testimonials/social proof would be great, etc.
And then make it very clear why users would want to try you over other competitors. What is your unique value proposition? Is it AI being able to generate suggestions on how to improve productivity?
Hey Alexander,
I tried to mention value proposition rather than properties on the landing page. How does it look?
https://www.monitup.com
Hey Alexander,
The AI suggestion GIF idea is nice, I'll do that. Thanks.
I guess I can't give full answers to questions like "Value proposition". Maybe it's because I'm a technical guy, maybe it's because my product isn't market fit yet.
We are improving the AI side, but the results are not great so far. At the moment, we are only focusing on new features that will help us to sell out of necessity. We haven't yet caught the interest we expected for the AI feature.
I must say, you've put a lot of effort in finding and converting LinkedIn leads.
But from what I've gathered, cold pitches mainly work for freelancers offering one-off services.
If you're going to pitch at all, I'll advise you go with a warm pitch.
Start by at least uploading evergreen posts on your LinkedIn page, then attempting to connect with them from a selfless perspective (offering value to them without getting anything in return).
Then you go in with your pitch after a few days/weeks - with a CTA.
The difference?
It's warm and more likely to convert.
As for your offer, I suggest you identify your product's Unique Differentiator.
What makes it different from the many many tracking software out there?
Is your method of delivery different?
Basically, what makes you stand out from your competitors?
Lastly, I think you should work on your landing page. I didn't understand the offer as soon as I landed which means I'm less likely to convert.
Tbh, I still don't get it.
TLDR
All the best!
Iveren,
Thank you very much for your detailed answer. I think it would be useful for me to share the contents of the message as well.
I didn't quite understand what exactly I should do about the website. Is there a website you can show as an example?
I have very strong and big competitors, for example, TimeDoctor employs 285 staff, while we are trying to run this project with only 2 people. TimeDoctor has been doing this job for 15 years, it's like we've been doing it for 3 years. Thus, the competition becomes very tough.
It would be better if I also share the text of the message:
You can enhance your employees' productivity and optimize your business processes with https://MonitUp.com.
Contact us to track your team's daily activities, perform productivity analysis, and receive AI-powered recommendations.
A free trial is available.
Best regards"
Thank you for accepting my connection request!
I wanted to introduce you to MonitUp, an advanced software designed to boost productivity and optimize business processes. With MonitUp, you can effortlessly track your team's daily activities, conduct productivity analysis, and receive AI-powered suggestions. Here are some key features that may interest you:
Activity Tracking: Effortlessly monitor your team's computer usage, the applications they use, and the websites they visit.
Productivity Analysis: Categorize applications as efficient, inefficient, or neutral, and MonitUp generates insightful productivity reports.
Motivation and Suggestions: With AI support, MonitUp provides personalized suggestions to boost team motivation and drive data-driven decision-making.
A demo is just a few clicks away and completely free. Simply sign up at https://www.monitup.com/signup and you just need to inform us. We will set up a free plan for you, so you can try MonitUp on up to 10 computers for 15 days and evaluate the results with your own data.
I'm excited to share more about how MonitUp can benefit your business. Feel free to reach out with any questions or to schedule a demo.
Best regards,
Faruk Durak
https://www.monitup.com"
I'll think about all these posts, thank you very much.
For starters, I don't think you should compare yourself too much to TimeDoctor especially since they've been in business for 15 years.
Instead, as I mentioned earlier, find a differentiating factor. A feature/benefit that makes you stand out in your space.
Also, none of the messages above communicates or provides value to the recipient. It's focused on your product.
One way around this is to mention how your product's features will benefit the user.
Some landing pages to look up to are:
Iveren,
Thank you very much for the samples landing pages.
I visit through them first, then I visited MonitUp, and while on MonitUp's homepage, I felt like I was scrolling through the properties page...
I think I understood what you meant, I'm not quite sure how to change it, but I'll give it some thought and then I can change my messages in the same way.
I'm glad you understood.
Good luck, Faruk!👍🏽
Hey Iveren,
I tried to mention value proposition rather than properties on the landing page. How does it look?
https://www.monitup.com
I think it's much better now.
Though, it's too short - a longer landing page will allow you communicate every feature and benefit and handle objections easily.
Social proof is still missing.
You should add that.
P.S. I'd appreciate it if you like/upvote my comments🙂
Iveren,
I don't have a ready post for social proof. My current customers may not want to share something like this. I'll look into how I can do this.
I upvoted thank you very much :)
Okay then.
Glad to help!
Also my social proof is ready :)
https://www.monitup.com
Yeah, that's not looking too great. You need to identify the problem:
Positives are that people are asking for a quote! Indicates it might not be #1
Maybe you need to figure out your business model. If you have dedicated users but still unable to bring in the money it is 100% business model issue.
The best way to know what business model to use is to ask your existing user. Ask them how they would like to pay , for what feature and most importantly why they want to pay. From that you need to find a business model that can fit your need and customer need.
It is more of try and error and need to do a lot of research and asking your customer. Because at the end they are the one who want to pay for it.
Sometimes they want to use the product but since it is just a "vitamin", there are not willing to pay for it. If that the case you still can find a business model that fit in.
You can check out this Having user but $0 revenue? Fix your business model
Have you made a data-driven market research? To build a buyer personas doesn't mean to brainstorm, it means to have clear results about which is the best target to hit. Has it been a data-driven or a brainstorm analysis?
Hey Jacopo,
I suck at analysis and research. No analysis here and it's all trial and error :(
I wanted to add a new feature and they suggested that I do analysis beforehand, I found this suggestion very reasonable and I decided that they were right. I tried to analyze, I tried hard, but I couldn't do anything. Then I added the feature :(
I guess I won't be able to improve myself on this.
I have seen a similar product: ManicTime
Welcome to this hard-to-sell product industry bro :)