EPISODE SUMMARY
Waylan Consulting CEO, Joe Petruzzi, shares his best outbound process and lead generation formula for B2B SaaS companies with SaaS Story In The Making host Matt Wolach. Petruzzi helps B2B SaaS and service companies 5x their monthly revenue with zero sales reps. As a lead generation master, Petruzzi also shares a high-converting outbound funnel and talks about maximizing it to the fullest.
PODCAST-AT-A-GLANCE
Podcast: SaaS-Story in the Making
Episode: Why Getting the Right People on Your Team Matters
Host: Matt Wolach, a B2B SaaS sales coach, Entrepreneur, and Investor.
Guest: Joe Petruzzi, CEO of Waylan Consulting, an Outbound Lead Generation Group
TOP TIPS FROM THIS EPISODE
Avoid the Struggle with a Winning Offer
When asked about why so many software founders struggle with outbound, Petruzzi tells the story of most clients he had in the past. Some of them have customers vying for their products and services, but they couldn’t articulate what the product genuinely does from a state that the leads would desire.
Petruzzi said: “They just kinda leave stuff like features or they’re competing like, ‘oh yeah, we’re this other tool that does the same thing as this other one.’ It’s just keeping it basic. They lack that good messaging. They don’t have, like, what’s the point of your product, what are they’re going to look like if they use your product now? They don’t get it. Even though it’s right in front of them, I would say that the big struggle with them and back when I coach, you know, all the time they don’t know what to say in that.”
Having an effective strategy for outbound messaging is essential to meeting the needs of your customers. That’s the biggest thing that will make an outbound campaign work. It’s not in the tactics or the tool. It’s in the offer – how you deliver the message. By targeting the right people with the right messages, you can build trust and give them more control over their experiences.
Use ‘Outbound Engineering’ to Systemize & Automate
Navigating outbound lead generation is not for the faint of heart. It requires a well-established outbound funnel to operate systems that are born out of countless trial and error. This can be daunting and intimidating to software founders who are new to the process and struggle with the whole outbound method from the get-go.
But this is where Outbound Engineering comes in, a process Joe created. Outbound Engineering is all about balancing automation and personalization. It plays a vital role in designing a process that helps with conversion. Aside from that, it is relatively cheap, fast, and direct – that’s why it works well. The only time it gets expensive is when you get a sales rep who you’re paying to manage the process.
As Petruzzi mentioned, “For example, we have cold emails on LinkedIn and all that stuff, but we have Video Apps, (it’s a software), we use it to automate the booking as well. Let’s say I sent an automated message, “Hey John, blah, here’s my pitch. I made this video for you.” He clicks on the video. This video goes through some stuff, some questions, but, in the end, if it’s done right, I have a call that says book a demo, and we’ve seen a 2 to 4 percent booking rate on that. They book the call for themselves, and now it’s almost like an ad where you pay an ad. Here’s my ad; people book through it like it’s almost like that, but I’m doing it for extremely cheap coz it’s an outbound sequence.”
Tools & Tactics Tend To Complicate the Process
One of the biggest mistakes pointed out by Petruzzi in the process is that tools and tactics tend to complicate things. Naturally, SaaS founders make software, and they love it. But sometimes, they find themselves lurking in Facebook Growth Hacker and LinkedIn groups, which are goldmines of free content and tools that they think will solve their lead problems.
So a lot of them end up buying the tools in the groups. The thing is, not everything works the same way. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for every business with these tools, so they don’t last, and most founders give up using them along the way.
Petruzzi said: “Normally, that can help sometimes. I could be wrong, but a lot of times consultants and agencies, don’t want them to do good. They want to get a client. They don’t care about them. They get whacked. By the end of this time, they try the tools, try the consultants, and keep ignoring, like I said, like in the first place, the big problem. It’s probably just the messaging and offers. They don’t even need an automation tool for that. They can get an email right now like a Gmail. Get your message, interview your customers – whatever that gets the message, you start sending emails now and get it validated, you know. They complicate it quite a bit.”
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
Personalize Messaging to Your Customers
From a conversion standpoint, personalization is all about targeting your customers’ pain. However, there’s a better way to target your prospects that’s beyond title and company name. By using the outbound funnel and implementing this process, you’ll be able to scale outreach that drives replies by focusing on your client’s pain points and intent data instead.
Automate Messaging with a Hook
Automating your core messaging requires an attractive pitch – something that would draw your prospects to your SaaS offer. There are many ways to automate cold outreach in the outbound funnel – it could be through email, InMail, messaging, or calls – all you need is a great hook to grab the customers’ attention.
With outbound call automation, sales reps spend less time hunting and pecking for information and more time resolving customer support calls. Outbound call and email automation also produce massive customer data that can be used to refine your efforts in lead generation.
TOP QUOTES
Joe Petruzzi
[19:00] “What can I do fast and what can I do to be more direct with my rate for outbound?”
[20:00] “Make sure you do multichannel and have that diversification.”
Matt Wolach
[0:02] “Outbound lead generation can be difficult and scary.”
[21:20] “Focus – make sure you get one right first, but then make sure you immediately follow that with getting other channels.”
LEARN MORE
To learn more about Joe Petruzzi and Waylan Consulting, visit www.waylanconsultinggroup.com.
You can also find Joe Petruzzi on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-petruzzi-b2b6a29b/.
For more about how host Matt Wolach helps software companies achieve maximum growth, visit https://mattwolach.com/
As part of the founding team in his first SaaS product, Matt owned the sales & marketing processes. But he struggled to sell and gain traction for the company. It took years of learning and tweaking before Matt created The Perfect DEAL Process, an innovative yet easy-to-implement method for closing more software deals. To find out more, visit https://mattwolach.com/about-matt
