Killer Marketing & Sales Lessons from Shark Tank's Season 10 | Part 1

Here’s the story of Cave Shake, a meal replacement or snack that is low on carbs, dairy- and gluten-free who pitched on the 10th season of Shark Tank. The firm racked up good sales volumes and were priced well. But when the founders presented on Shark Tank, they were a bit unprepared. Unprepared to compare the rationale behind giving up equity to an external incubator (for mentoring, not actual funds) with a scaled-down stake they were offering the sharks (for an actual $$ investment). Okay, enough of money talk. All things said, they became two-time lucky at the end - one, to have survived being eaten alive by the “Sharks” (where they get serious business advice & are questioned for their lack of preparedness). And two, to have Charles Barkley, a “Shark” invest in them.

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A quick background. Shark Tank is a show run by ABC TV (streams on Sony Liv) where successful businessmen and women review pitches from entrepreneurs looking for a funding boost to scale their business or get mentoring assistance. The regular cast include, Kevin O’Leary, Mark Cuban and Lori Greiner. Oh, even Robert Herjavec to a large extent. Other frequent investors include Barbara Corcoran and Daymond John.

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So getting back to Cave Shake’s story, it paints a familiar picture: you’ve reached MVP or see potential to scale but growth is stalling or even falling. Think if you threw a dart on a few prospect names in your TAM lists to ask you a few questions about your business and they raised ones similar to what the investors on Shark Tank asked. Would you, as a marketer be prepared to answer them? And by virtue of that knowledge, be able to market better?

From the first quarter of the episodes on Season 10, here are 5 TL;DR marketing lessons to ace your growth story:

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Prospects crave variety | Market differently

The season opener has incredible pitches from all the entrepreneurs presenting, except one. Among the winners, Bear Minimum stands out for using a strong script and backing it up with the right visuals (see image below) to educate the Sharks of a foldable cook pot for travellers or campers. Think of the critically acclaimed sales pitch deck from Zuora as another way to learn, considered it is regarded the best sales pitch deck ever.

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Key Takeaway: While B2C marketers appear to have room to push the creative limits, so to speak, B2B marketers feel they walk a tightrope when they think of attempting the same. Bottom line, take a leaf out of Bear’s or FinalStraw’s pitch & see your results improve.

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Specific audiences expect specific pitches

If you’re creating a deck for your founding team to pitch, know which investors will align with your domain or mission & custom-create pitches for them. One great example from the show is Dmitri Love, an entrepreneur pitching a technical concept of Bundil (an app that allows anyone to divert spare change from purchases into cryptocurrency) He misses the mark by not tailoring his pitch specifically to get a financial investor, Kevin O’Leary’s attention. Kevin, in fact is a genuis at structuring deals on Shark Tank, to include dimensions like royalty or loans that usually complements a straight up capital infusion term. Kevin shows interest anyway, and as a natural “Shark”, uses the entrepreneur’s deal making ineptitude to his advantage, asking for a 50% stake for the investment. The latter agrees rather reluctantly. Had Dmitri come prepared showing better sales, initial app downloads or market viability, he could have had valid reasons to demand a lower equity from the investor.

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Key Takeaway: Create buyer personas or ideal customer profiles for your target audience and know their career goals, challenges, and expectations. Then, create customised pitches per persona.

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Influencers create positive brand associations

Butter Cloth, a company producing comfortable, stretchable long-fibre cotton shirts that gets immediate praise from the Sharks, added a popular basketball player Ron Artest (also called Metta World Peace) onto their team. If you might think I’m confusing a celeb with an influencer, he, through his knowledge of choosing sportswear that’s comfortable and functional, became a great fit to test and advise ways to improve the make of shirts. With the rise of micro-influencers today who can technically assess and back a start up or business like yours, it's the best way to amplify your brand without having to spend a bucketload of cash having a reputed influencer to endorse you. The latter will guarantee brand awareness lift but not hard, cold cash through customer acquisition.

(Photo: courtesy of Butter Cloth)

Bonus Takeaway: Never underestimate the grit of someone who made their way up in the career ladder and now runs a firm. Look at the founder's drive and if it matches that of Danh Tran, a Vietnamese migrant and founder of Butter Cloth. Such individuals will work extra hard and rise to the top. Market becomes way easier.

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Leverage Behavioural Psychology (& become a natural at it):

All of us have a common code that make us, well, behave, perceive or react relatively the same. Marketing and sales professionals must master leveraging behavioural traits to their businesses' favour by finding trigger points to advance the pitch or put the brakes on and reattempt selling later. Take for instance how Jon from RewardStock, a travel rewards app that can aggregate air miles or hotel points to heavily discount your overall travel expenses, used the Reflection Effect to his advantage. In fact, this effect is a subset of the far more popular Loss Aversion technique. In RewardStock’s case, Jon plays to the principle that we are more risk-seeking when there is something we can lose – in his case, losing out on incredible discounting and savings anyone could get on a typical budget you'd incur for a trip (by using his app). Another facet of the Reflection Effect principle connotes being risk-averse when we have something to gain. Broadly, both directly reflect the Loss Aversion effect.

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Recommended reads to get a good grip on behavioural psychology:

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Robert Cialdini

Predictably Irrational - Dan Ariely

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Refine your businesses' core mission & sell it well:

A firefighter, Keith Young’s kids take a high utility cutting board he created (before he died) and create a company called ‘Cup Board Pro’. The product gets a unanimous thumbs up from all investor “Sharks. The story of Keith fighting his health problems, being a 9/11 responder, and the obvious brilliance of the product lands the kid-preneurs a deal with all sharks involved in a split-investment arrangement (a rarity in dealmaking throughout Shark Tank's life). The sharks knew that marketing the unique story of the founding team behind the brand was highly likely to resonate with buyers. In fact, the Sharks also decided to route any profits they would make from cutting board sales to support social organisations trying to prevent causes that caused Keith’s death.

Key takeaway: When you can carefully weave your businesses’ larger purpose into your marketing communication, it puts you in a different league from your competitors and warms prospects over to appreciate the positive impact you will create. Your mission statement that truly seeks to gives back can be a good starting point for this process.

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Humour sells but use it wisely

Episode 4 of Season 10 mixes things up with a hit presentation from the son-and-father founder duo at Manscaped, a range of products for men to take better care of well, their intimate areas (can’t say more - #NSFW,). To pull off a pitch that conveyed the dangers of previous practices employed by men, and offer a safer, more ergonomic and effective solution, they claimed that humour was the only instrument to convey core benefits of the product(s) to their TA. The result: their videos hit 48 million in cumulative views and their products sold like hot cakes (topline of $1.7 million within 8 months). Through my experience browsing through scores of posts on my timeline, Gong follows this principle to the T, conveying how they help salespeople sell better through witty post briefs, with a CTA for next steps.

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Key Takeaway: Humour breaks down a few barriers and establishes an stronger connect with your audience, something a more somber pitch cannot do. This applies even if you’re selling an industry-leading product or service.

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Bonus: How Sharks’ pitch their offers to entrepreneurs

Marketing was never uni-directional:

In the case of RewardStock, the travel rewards app, the tables turn. From the entrepreneur pitching to the investors, we see a fiesty (can I say, sharky) duel develop between investors Kevin O’Leary and Mark Cuban to convince Jon, the founder to choose their offer. Let’s think about a scenario where your capacity is defined and you get two large orders that can’t be fulfilled at the same time to meet their deadlines. To be efficient and manage your operations, find which order (PO) can give you the right returns or help extend business relations for the long run with that enterprise.

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When the market teaches, learn & adapt:

Soupergirl, all plant-based protein & fibre premiered on Shark Tank in episode 2 and had a great presentation start until the sharks got to understand that they were putting in a ton of cash despite lesser inflows a.k.a a bleeding business. The founders were against outsourcing their soup production to manufacturers who couldn’t reach their quality standards. The Sharks clearly felt a middle ground could be brokered. This clearly bottlenecked their growth. They walked away from the tank the same way they had entered – without a deal, but are steadily growing. As a marketer, try to gauge if Mark’s aphorism ‘Perfection is the enemy of profitability’ (directed towards the founders pitching) is a principle of the founding team where you plan to work or currently work at. If it does, no amount of marketing can get the growth you want.

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There you have it, the top marketing principles that caught my attention from the show. Take each pitch on the Shark Tank floor at face value and you can almost miss everything going on beneath the surface - the dynamics of brand equity, utility, product reviews, business models, supply & demand, etc. Your prospects, in similar fashion are considering factors that matter to meet their goals. And if you factor them all in to frame your marketing pitch, your brand voice, and positioning, you will soon be leaping in delight like the founder of Butter Cloth, when he landed a deal with a shark, Robert Herjavec.

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If you've watched Shark Tank, how has it helped you become a better marketer or salesperson? I'd like to learn from you as well.

Spoiler Alert: Shark Tank will soon have an India edition. Can't be more excited.

And stay tuned. More marketing and sales lessons from the rest of Season 10 and previous seasons will follow.

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