{"id":1533,"date":"2018-04-05T18:30:56","date_gmt":"2018-04-06T01:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3.14.248.234\/?p=1533"},"modified":"2020-06-26T15:47:43","modified_gmt":"2020-06-26T22:47:43","slug":"steli-efti-badass-sales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bamf.com\/steli-efti-badass-sales\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Become a Badass Sales Founder with Steli Efti"},"content":{"rendered":"

How did he do it?
\nIt’s not magic.
\nIt’s hard work that makes Steli one of the most badass bootstrapped founders.
\nIn this post, we’re breaking down step by step how Steli built his influence across organic channels creating a brand few can compete with:<\/p>\n

Step 1: Create a Homepage that Sells<\/h2>\n

Steli keeps the Close.io<\/a> homepage simple.
\nYour focus is immediately drawn to the two green CTA buttons. The dark background helps showcase these CTAs.
\nThe tagline?<\/em>
\nDoesn’t get much better.
\nHe provides the benefit in three words.
\n\"\"
\nHe then inserts borrowed credibility with featured logos and testimonials – smart move:
\n\"\"
\nThen he inserts Close.io’s credibility.
\n“We’ve written three books on sales. Why wouldn’t you trust us?”<\/em>
\n\"\"
\nThen if you’re not ready to become a customer, he has a low-barrier call-to-action to join the email list.
\n\"\"
\nHow well does his site perform?<\/em>
\nTake a look at the stats. He averages 450K visitors\/month with a high average time-on-site and page view. The bounce rate is a bit high, but the numbers look solid.
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Step 2: Bootstrap the Company<\/h2>\n

Steli bootstrapped Close.io which gave him an advantage: efficiency.
\nWhen analyzing his competitors, you can see exactly how his marketing strategies are outcompeting their online presence.
\nLet’s compare Close.io’s stats to Pipedrive, the industry leader in CRM with over 320 employees:
\n\"\"
\nPipedrive’s average time on site and page view shows a lot of room for improvement in Close.io’s customer and prospect experience.
\nStill, when compared to other industry leaders, you’ll notice Close.io has the upper hand. See below how SugarCRM traffic is tanking. It doesn’t surprise me as their page view number and time on site is relatively low.
\n\"\"
\nLet’s take a look at another industry-leading CRM, ProsperWorks<\/a>:
\n\"\"
\nAt first, the stats look competitive to Close.io. Here’s why they’re not –
\nProsperWorks gets double the traffic Close.io does, but with 7X more employees than Close.io.
\nThat’s a bad sign of high overhead.
\nIt’s even worse when you look at their traffic source:
\nThen it takes another knock down when you consider ProsperWorks raised $87 million dollars:
\n\"\"
\nWhen we find out that close to half their company is comprised of either sales or business development employees, we get a better idea of why this company has taken the focus off their online marketing. It’s working to propel their growth, but will they fuel the sales revenue back into organic online marketing?\u00a0<\/em>
\n\"\"
\nLet’s take a look back at\u00a0SugarCRM<\/a>. They raised $123.1 million dollars. They have less traffic with 10X more employees than Close.io. Someone screwed up on this one.<\/em>
\n\"\"
\nAs you can see the picture isn’t getting any prettier either:
\n\"\"
\nOverall takeaway:<\/strong> Close.io is the clear market leader next to Pipedrive in regards to online marketing.
\nKeep in mind, online marketing doesn’t determine everything about growth. The fact that ProsperWorks heavily focuses on offline sales is not a negative if it helps their company scale efficiently.<\/p>\n

Step 3: Crush it on YouTube<\/h2>\n

Where does Steli drive traffic from?<\/em>
\nOne huge source is YouTube<\/a>. He has over 700 videos about sales.
\n\"\"
\nFive hundred of these videos are sales motivation videos – a popular category on YouTube. Once he realized that, he didn’t just double down, he crushed the market with content.
\n\"\"
\n575 videos later, Steli still makes them on a regular basis.
\n\"\"
\nTake a look at the results below. When looking at Close.io’s social traffic, YouTube makes up a huge percentage next to Facebook. Plus, it’s evergreen content. This keeps his traffic source producing revenue time and again.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/h2>\n

What most people don’t realize, Steli’s subscribers were driven primarily by twenty of his top six-hundred videos. That means 1 of every 30 videos had a heavy contribution to his subscriber base. In other words, he dominated his YouTube channel with one main quality: consistency.
\n\"\"
\nSteli also makes sure to link every video back to his website or relevant blog post in the description. The crazy part?<\/em> Steli makes a YouTube video for all his blog posts. You’ll also notice how his descriptions are SEO optimized. Perfect for ranking on YouTube and Google.
\n\"\"
\nLet’s see how his YouTube videos play into his blog.<\/p>\n

Step 4: Double-Down on Your Blog<\/h2>\n

Notice the stats below. Almost half of Close.io’s traffic is driven to his blog – even more than the homepage. I have no idea how many blog posts Steli has written, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was close to one thousand or more.
\n\"\"
\nSteli has one of the most optimized blogs<\/a> for capturing emails I’ve seen. Period.
\nHe also adds some secret sauce.
\nHe includes a YouTube video explaining the blog post at the bottom. This helps rank the YouTube video while adding an extra layer of personalization to his content.
\n\"\"
\nEvery call to action at the bottom of his posts is relevant to the content. Notice how the one in the picture above is different than the one below.
\n\"\"
\nSteli is segmenting his audience with his blog posts to more effectively market to them.
\nAnd he’s doing a brilliant job at it.<\/p>\n

Step 5: Answer Every Relevant Quora Question<\/h2>\n

Steli’s on every platform that produces quality SEO for Close.io.
\nThat means Quora, too.
\nHe’s answered over several hundred sales questions on Quora while back linking to his website in every one. This takes a considerable amount of time, but again it’s evergreen content on platforms where his competitors refuse to play ball.
\n\"\"
\nAfter 700 YouTube videos, 1000 blog posts, and 300 Quora answers, you’d think he’d produced enough content already, but it doesn’t stop there.<\/p>\n

Step 6: Use Viral Platforms<\/h2>\n

Steli takes advantage of platforms that push his content out to a larger audience, including Product Hunt and Udemy. Steli has 80 submissions to Product Hunt, providing a ton of SEO juice back to his website.
\n\"\"
\nWith Udemy, he’s reached over 15,000 people interested in sales organically.
\n\"\"
\nAgain, these are both platforms his competitors don’t play on.
\nSo far we’ve covered five platforms Steli has dominated over most of his competitors: blogging, YouTube, Quora, Product Hunt, and Udemy. That’s what you call pure hustle.<\/p>\n

Step 7. Build Authority<\/h2>\n

If you’re relying on your personal brand to sell, then you need third-party credibility.
\nSteli takes full advantage of this by hopping on podcasts and guest posting.
\n\"\"
\nHe’s been featured everywhere from Mixergy<\/em> to The Art of Charm<\/em>.
\nThen he takes it one step further by sharing a podcast with Hitesh Shah, co-founder of Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics, called The Startup Chat<\/em><\/a>. To date, they’ve done 297 episodes where they talk about scaling startups.
\nAs I searched the CEOs of competing companies, I found little to no guest posts and podcast features. It’s just another avenue where Steli is out-hustling his competition. That’s badass<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Play on Platforms Your Competitors Won’t<\/h2>\n

Steli is throwing punches.
\nHe’s landing a lot of rights on platforms his competitors aren’t even on.
\nWith any founder producing content, there’s always the question of whether they can keep up the momentum. If you look at the last six years of his consistency, there’s no doubt he will.
\nIf you want to bootstrap your company, then Steli provides the framework of just how much work is involved to make it a reality.
\nDo you have what it takes?<\/em>
\n]]><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How did he do it?
\nIt’s not magic.
\nIt’s hard work that makes Steli one of the most badass bootstrapped founders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":18619,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ub_ctt_via":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[539,326,3386,3254,218,114,293],"tags":[],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/bamf.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/How-to-Scale-a-10-Million-Dollar-SaaS-Company-with-Patrick-Campbell-Co-Founder-of-ProfitWell-5.png","author_info":{"display_name":"Houston Golden","author_link":"https:\/\/bamf.com\/author\/josh\/"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bamf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bamf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bamf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bamf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bamf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bamf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bamf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bamf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bamf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bamf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}