Erudite

CRO: "Let's invest $500K towards an SDR program." CEO: "That seems... risky?" CRO: "Nah, look at the spreadsheet. If they hit their numbers, we'll land a 5X ROI." *FAST FORWARD 12 MONTHS* CEO: "Why didn't it work? We generated $115K from the SDR team." CRO: "I don't know. Maybe the SDRs were just lazy." CFO: "We can't afford to keep this going." CRO: "But the spreadsheet is saying we can get an 8X ROI if we keep going." For the past 4 years, CEOs/founders have been tricked into over-investing towards SDR programs because of misleading predictable revenue projections. And when you're trying to scale your biz, this pressure often gets placed by investors and/or your head of revenue. If you want successful SDR program, you need to check these boxes: ? Accelerated training & onboarding ? Integrations between all major tech ? Messaging, strategy, & department alignment ? Tech stack (dialer, data provider, AI enablement) ? A complete account & lead list with accurate data You'll also need a strong team leader, product-market fit, RevOps, and so on. (It's tougher than it looks). "But my SDR was awesome! He crushed quota!" This is true for a handful of people. Myself/Charles Needham/Kevin Hopp/Ronen R. Pessar/?? Tom Slocum are prime examples of people who have done this over and over again. We're 1 in 100. And it's very difficult to find reps who can do the same. When you're scaling your pipeline from $100K MRR ? $5M MRR, you need to start thinking about pipeline in layers. - Layer one: 1-3 SDR(s) - Layer two: Cold email campaign - Layer three: Organic content marketing - Layer four: Paid SEO & advertising - Layer five: [Whatever pipeline model works for your biz] Let's say you only want to invest in SDRs because the other stuff "sounds like bullsh*t" to you. You'll get burned when that channel changes. Example (1): Last year, it became B2C cold calling become 100% illegal. The orgs who fully relied on outbound sellers had to close shop. Example (2): AT&T + Verizon created "spam" and "telemarketer" labels for cold callers using unverified numbers. Example (3): ESPs (Google/Microsoft) continue to add limitations for cold email every 3 months. All pipeline channels work. It's not that cold calling is dead. But putting all your eggs in one basket simply doesn't work anymore. #coldcalling #LinkedIn #Marketing

I uploaded this video 9 months ago after shutting down my outbound agency. Here's an update: Ghostwriting has been way harder than outbound. [SOME UNCOMFORTABLE KPIS] Outbounder mtgs/week = 13.4 Erudite mtgs/week = 4.5 Outbounder mtg to pilot % = 32% Erudite mtg to pilot % = 9.8% Outbounder pilot to contract % = 69% Erudite pilot to contract % = 35.4% __ The first 2 months of business raked in a whopping $0.00. And recently, I've been questioning all of it. - "Do people need a ghostwriter?" - "Was this a stupid decision?" - "Will I get replaced by AI?" Last two months have been interesting, though. Client 1: Landed 27 meetings during a pilot including a FAANG company Client 2: Was contacted by a F500 for an acquisition (because they saw our content) Client 3: Over 4M impressions < 4 months; 100% organic When I shut down Outbounder, there were a lot of different reasons. Some people bashed me in the comments, suggesting I was "lazy" and a failure. You can think what you want. The truth was in the writing – my position on outbound changed and I'm happy with my decision. Erudite's impact vs. Outbounder's impact is unmatched. Never stopping this agency. Will scale this thing to the moon. We've added some new offers, too. - Ghostwriting for Twitter - Thumbnails for YouTube - TikTok/Short video content - Pipeline consulting (outbound, content, etc.) Excited to see what the next 9 months look like. Will update again then. #Entrepreneurship #Marketing #LinkedIn

I went from a wannabe professional gamer ? SDR ? Sales Director ? agency owner in 6 years. The shift happened around the time we had our first daughter. At the time, I was working 12+ hour shifts at the supermarket. (I was the milk dept. guy). When I got home, I'd recharge with 3 cups of coffee and stream on Twitch for pocket change. Having a kid reaaally put the pressure on. Diapers. Baby food. Medical insurance. Dropping 20 bombs in Call of Duty wasn't going to pay the bills. Sold my console and picked up a real job in tech. It was an appointment setting role. The company was a fast-paced boiler room in Philly. Each month, 10 sales reps would quit from burnout. So each month, they'd hire 10 replacements. I onboarded with 9 other guys - Day 1: Training - Day 4: 2 of them quit - Day 7: Cold call like a maniac - Day 14: 50% of the team quits - Day 30: We're all given our first commission check Kid you not, I was THIS ?? close to vomiting on myself. An extra $1,800. Thought it was a typo. "I'm never switching careers." [Fast forward 4 years] In the middle of a cold calling session, I stumbled across Seth Godin's cell number. Seth Godin, for all my fellow sales folk, is the king of marketing. Arguably the most influential marketer of our era. "No f**king way this is real." *Ring *Ring Soft voice over the phone: "This is Seth" I had binged Godin's books. I read his newsletter each morning. I listened to every podcast he was featured on. When he answered, I was shocked. So shocked that I embarrassed myself and rambled like an idiot. He was cool about it, though. We ended up having a short chat about my career – I was looking for some advice. Seth told me to quit my job. And instead of cold calling, I needed to find a way for "prospects to chase after me instead of me chasing after my prospects." My idea was to post every day on LinkedIn. Maybe that'd bring in some good business? - 1 week later: “This isn’t f**king working.” - 2 weeks later: “How will I be able to hit quota?” - 3 weeks later: “Holy sh*t I woke up to an inbound on my calendar!” - 4 weeks later: “F**k me. This sucks. That inbound was just luck. - 5 weeks later: “Holy sh*t two inbounds this week.” - 6 weeks later: “What would happen if I hosted a webinar?” - 7 weeks later: “Holy sh*t one of my webinar leads just bought a license.” - 8 weeks later: “I wonder how far I’ll get if I go 100% all-in?” Launched my ghostwriting + content agency (Erudite) shortly after. We've helped clients land investors, meetings with FAANG companies, and go viral. Content should be the biggest driver for your pipeline. Meet with me for 30. I'll show you how: https://lnkd.in/gJrdfrNM

This Photoshop campaign was one of my favorites. And it brought in 18% of my revenue. CONTEXT: When I first launched Erudite, I posted this carousel. It included all the accounts I wanted to work with; this is how I planned to get their attention. You probably don't want to hear this... But selling to tech companies is tough right now. *It's awfully crowded And while calling, emailing, DMing can still bring in pipeline, it doesn't hit the same way it did in 2020. So when I was searching for my first client, cold outbound was on the bottom of my to-dos. If you want to launch a creative agency, steal this framework: STEP 1: Pick 10-25 PERFECT leads - Save them in folk STEP 2: Create something eye-catching - Like these graphics - Some free posts - A video (Lean into your strengths). STEP 3: Outbound to them Less than 1/3rd of the leads in this carousel spoke to me. (One guy was insulted, lol). So if they don't get back to you, go old fashioned and hit their line. Use ZoomInfo if you have it. TL;DR Get suuuuuuuper creative with how you land new business. #Marketing #Socials #LinkedIn

I pitched my agency to Gary Vee this Thanksgiving... at midnight. Can you guess what happened? He appreciated the hustle and sat through the entire call. And I booked the demo. Only... I didn't really. This isn't really Gary. It's an AI Gary clone. But it sure FELT like the real Gary Vee. This was done with Rehers. You can cold call practice with ANYONE on LinkedIn and it's only $30/mo. #coldcalling #content

Entrepreneurs: When you're stuck on what to post, ask yourself these 7 questions: Question 1: What's the biggest business mistake I've made? Question 2: Who pushed me to do this? Question 3: Why did I want to build this? Question 4: What bothers me about this industry? Question 5: What is my playbook to get us from 0 ? 1 and 1 ? 2? Question 6: Who had the biggest impact on me and why? Question 7: If I had to do it all again, what would I do differently? The answers to these questions usually have interesting stories attached to them. Stories worth sharing.

In 2 days, I'm giving away $1,250 worth of Icypeas email credits away (250,000 emails). Here's how to register ?? Step 1: Join Discord server (link in comments) Step 2: Go to giveaway channel Step 3: Submit your ? Name ? ICP ? Role On Friday we'll pick 10 people. Each will get 25K emails.

Thanks for the love Mike Blumenthal ??

We often lose deals to outbound agencies because they think content is a waste of time. Yesterday, a popular agency owner asked "Why should I bother with content?" Here's exactly what he's missing out on: 1. The compounding effect Acquisition channels complement each other. Example: Outbound (ONLY): 10 meetings/wk Content marketing (ONLY): 10 meetings/wk Outbound + Content (COMBINED): 30+ meetings/wk 2. Attracting talent Take a look at Joey Gilkey, Michel Lieben ??, and Henry Schuck They've been able to attract the best talent in SaaS. (Part of that is also due to good product/service). High performing workers are naturally attracted to big personas. (They typically don't want to work for no-name orgs/founders). 3. Generate inbound leads Each week, I generate at least 1 inbound. Sometimes a single post will generate 5+ demos. 4. Social selling Even if you're not landing inbounds, you'll at least be creating conversations. Use the conversations to: ? Generate meetings ? Ask for referrals ? Warm leads (I use Kondo to help with this) 5. Strong personal brand = Strong company brand Quick exercise — going to list some names and you'll immediately associate them with their brand Examples: Elon Musk ? Tesla Steve Jobs ? Apple Bill Gates ? Microsoft 6. It's literally a free channel with an infinite ROI The only investment is your time. And you can hire someone who has been doing this a while (like me ??♂?) if you don't want to invest the time.

My agency has been failing. And after months of f***ing up w/ Erudite, we're finally getting business. These tips are so obvious and simple. I wish I knew them 3 months ago when we launched our content marketing biz: 1 | Do free work when you have no clients 80% of my day is filled completing free projects. The free projects: ? Sometimes turn into clients ? Build your portfolio ? Create referrals Was too stubborn to do this at first — made the leap and it made all the difference. 2 | Testimonials matter, but your portfolio matters more When we were trying to close our first client, we kept getting shut down for a lack of experience. Leads did not care about the testimonials. They just wanted to see we could do the job. 3 | Give your clients more than promised **Spoiler for current/future clients We end up giving our leads 20% more content than promised. Underpromising + overdelivering = happy customers & renewals 4 | Be picky AF Doesn't matter what business you're in. Look for red flags in your demo calls and shut down sh*t prospects. Even if you're BROKE, do NOT take on clients who will be a never ending problem. (I've been very fortunate with this). To my agency friends, what're the biggest mistakes you've made?