3 Mindset Shifts That Lead to Explosive Growth

Reading Time: 14 minutes

Overview: Matt Wolach a B2B sales coach goes through 3 ways to help improve your confidence and your sales.

About the speaker: Matt Wolach works with founders and leaders in B2B SaaS companies to transform their product demo and sales process into one that attracts and emotionally compels buyers to purchase.

Hi, I am Matt. I am so excited to talk to you today and be with you here for the RevTech Summit. This is a great thing that’s happening. I hope that you’re able to digest all of the sessions. Today, we’re going to talk about three mindset shifts that lead to explosive growth, because that’s what I focus on. I work with people, I work with clients around the world and help them find explosive growth in their software companies. So let’s talk about how it’s going to happen. First, who is this guy who’s presenting to you? I’m Matt Wolach, I am a software sales coach.

Like I mentioned, I work with software companies to help them find the right ways to sell. To help them find the right sales process. And how do they implement that? How do they close a lot of deals at scale, I’m going to give you some of that today. I’m going to give you stuff that I teach my clients. So that you can take that and take off yourself.

Well, I’m a family guy, first and foremost, a little bit about me, I love my family, I’ve got a beautiful wife and two great girls who keep me on my toes, that’s for sure. I’ve been in SaaS for 15 years that software is a service, I have done it, I have lived it, I grew a few companies. I started few companies grew them and exited fortunate enough to have that full experience of going from the ground floor. Really pushing and striving and struggling and then figuring it out.

And getting to a point where I could really, really enjoy my life. Have the freedom because of those exits, that made us really, really set for life, so to speak. Now I enjoy helping out what I help with, really the demo in the sales call process. So if you do software demos, if you do sales calls of any nature, that is my specialty of making sure how to maximize those calls. If you get an opportunity to talk with somebody on the phone, how do you make sure that you don’t let them go. That you close the deal. So really, it’s all about getting the emotions going. And closing? We’re going to talk a bit about that. My personal Why? Well, as I mentioned, I love software. I’ve been in it. I’ve lived it for years.

And I’ve done the whole thing of getting a company started and realizing that you don’t know what you’re doing. That happened to me, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was fortunate that I was able to figure out the right process. I was able to figure out exactly what was needed. Not everybody is so fortunate. So what I do now is I help other companies. Now that I’ve gone through that I’ve lived it. I did all kinds of trial and error, I tried to figure out what to do. Lots of error, and that trial and error. Eventually learned it. So now I help other software companies figure out what the right path is for them.

I love that because it allows me to help somebody struggling, get over those initial hurdles. Get over those speed bumps and roadblocks and take off. I really enjoy when my clients win. I do this because I teach them the four pillars to scaling SaaS software. So what are those? Well, it’s attract, engage, close, and scale. We’re going to talk about what each of those means. So you have a good understanding of that. But you really need to attract, engage, close, and scale and know how to do each of those really, really well. Unfortunately, if you are in software, you know this 92% of software companies fail.

It’s really scary, it’s really not fun to think about. There is so much competition. And there’s a lot of software fatigue in the market, meaning people are so overwhelmed with the amount of software that they need, that they usually put up their walls to any new software coming their way. Saying I don’t need anything else. Because of this 92% of software companies fail. They don’t know how to get over those hurdles, how to overcome a lot of those objections, in order to be able to close deals and to close them at scale. So you can grow the company. Let’s talk about how we’re going to do that.   

First, those four pillars to scale. Well, number one is attract. You’ve got to be able to attract Perfect Fit customers really, really well. What are the principles of this? Well, you need identify who your ICP is your perfect fit your perfect customer, you need to know that first and foremost. So you know who you’re going to be after. Once you understand who they are, where do they congregate? Where do they gather? Where can you go to find them. You need to be able to speak directly to them.

You’ve got to learn from them. You’ve got to get an understanding of what they feel and what their lives are like. And you really need to do this through multiple channels. So a lot of people say, I’ve got my marketing channel, great, you need a lot. Because what if that marketing channel fails. So you’ve got to be able to have multiple marketing channels to get to your exact perfect ICP your perfect customer, and make them aware and interested of what you have and how you can solve their problems. That’s attract.  

Number two, engage. Now that they know about you, it’s really, really critical for you to be able to engage with them. Okay, what does that mean? Well, we need to connect with them. We need to be able to personally touch them somehow. I say this for if you’re a company that has a decent price point 50 to 100 bucks a month or more, you can personally connect with them. If you’re less than that you can automate. But that connection, that engagement can happen in other ways other than a personal engagement. There can be some automated methods for doing that.

I do not recommend automation above $100 a month, less than 100, even less than 50 really is where you can think about automating the process. Above that people are not going to want to go through an automation. They want to understand and learn from somebody how you can solve their problems. That’s gonna take some effort, you need to put effort forth, if you’re going to be able to engage at scale with your prospects. That effort doesn’t have to be you.

We’ll talk about that in a little bit. But there has to be some effort there. In order to do this, really, you have to have a process, how many times have you called a company you’re looking for something for your house, maybe or you’re you sent in a lead. And you don’t hear back from the company or it takes them days to get back to you. That’s wasted. The reason they have those problems, because they don’t have a process around engaging. It’s critical to do so you really need them to take the next step. If you want to be successful in engaging lots of your leads. So that’s number two. The engage pillar.  

Number three is close. Once you’ve attracted them, once you’ve engaged with them, and maybe now you get them into a demo. You get them into a sales call, they’re taking that effort to be there with you to spend their time. They’re putting forth that kind of effort, that means they have a problem that they want solved. That means you must close them. You’ve got to be able to close the deal. And that is the close pillar, you need to follow a framework to do this. If you think that you’re going to be able to just tell them everything about your product that’s good to go because your product is so great. Think again.

You’ve got to follow the right process. The right framework for closing deals. That means you have to have an incredible demo. An incredible sales call. Those have got to be very well structured, and expert, expertly delivered. Okay, by the way, expertly delivered, I don’t want you to think you need to be a perfect salesperson. People that come to me are usually technical. Are very product oriented and never sold before. But once you learn the right process, and you learn how to deliver it, you can take off. I’ll show you some examples a little bit, but a lot of the clients I work with, in two or three weeks, they are seeing two and three times the close rate that they had before.

It’s possible you can do it. A lot of things we’re gonna talk about today are going to help you. You need to understand the psychology in order to do that. And once you learn that, once you learn how people act. How people buy, it makes it a lot easier to close deals, and you need to create emotion, create emotion, for action. Okay, very, very, very important. So that’s close.  

The fourth pillar scale, you’re gonna grow really big. You’ve got to learn how to scale. There’s process around it, you have to define that process. If you want to bring somebody else in to do what you’re doing and do it as well or better than what you’re doing. You had better have a defined process to show them at every step of the way exactly what to do and how to do it. Critical. You need to know who to hire, what should you look for? How should you hire a salesperson? And then how do you implement a proper compensation plan, such that it’s going to motivate them to do exactly what they need to do in order for your company to grow. But they get a personal gain as well.

So salespeople By the way, everybody knows, motivated by that personal game. And then you need to manage that team to win. A lot of sales people think independently. How do you create that team dynamic? You need to be able to do that if you want to scale. Okay, so software founders and leaders typically they feel very uncertain. If they don’t have any pieces of these four pillars or they’re missing any one of them. They’re uncertain, they’re frustrated, they’re tired, stressed, and really losing confidence. They stay up late trying to finish projects, they get up sluggish. They put out some fires. Maybe they’re unsure of how to prospect Because they don’t know how to go out and find leads and prospects and leads. They avoid it scary. A few sales calls maybe, but really no confidence in closing them. Not a lot of fun.

What we see once people learn the right ways to do it the most successful sales. Or most successful founders and leaders in software. They’re not selling, they’re actually advising. They’re helping, they’re not trying to jack up metrics, they’re actually solving problems, okay. And they’re really not on the opposite side of the table negotiating against their prospect, they don’t see it that way. They’re on the same side consulting, helping the buyer. Okay, it’s a bit of a mindset shift. But if you can make that shift, you’re going to find that sales actually come much easier. People can recognize what you’re doing. And if you’re helping, they’ll see that and they’ll be open to having you help them. It’s transformational. Okay.

So once you do this, and you make this shift, as a software leader, you’re now feeling energized and motivated and confident. I hear confidence all the time from my clients. They talk about how much more confident they are and how much it’s helping them close. And you’re very certain and excited for the future. Now you’re days, you’re more in balance. You have activities that you’re doing that are actually moving the needle. You actually have less work, because once you have the right process, and you’re doing it correctly. A lot less to do and you’re able to get more people to do it for you. You have more time because of that, and you’re excited for the next day ahead.  

So how can you make this transformation? Well, I had to learn it, I learned to adjust in three ways. Okay, so let’s talk about those three shifts, I alluded to earlier. Three shifts for that transformation. Shift number one, it’s not about you, it’s about them. This is really important. Because a lot of times people always think that selling is just telling them everything about you. It’s not. And what happens is people say oh, we’re the number one system and look how awesome we are. And we’ve won all kinds of awards and all the big players to use us. You’ve seen it. Websites look like that. Sometimes you have sales people telling you how awesome they are in the company. And what do you want to do? Don’t want to hear.

Prospects, they do not want to hear all of that. The challenge is most software people are doing this, and it kills them from the start. It really, really crushes deals, because as soon as you do that people sense selling and they put up their walls. They’re gonna say, Okay, here comes a sale. They’re going to tell me all about this and yada yada. By the way, you’re a salesperson, so I don’t believe half of it. Sales wall. Okay, not good kills the deal. So really the big mindset shift. Sales is not about you and your company, it’s about your buyer. Really, really important to be able to understand that. It’s about the buyer.

So when you do this correctly, the prospect opens up that wall they had up when you start talking about how you can help them. How you can be consultative advising. That wall comes down, they’re more receptive. You connect with them because there’s no wall. Okay? They trust you more, they believe you, they’re going to be able to when people say I’m going to help you, I’m going to help you. It’s much more likely they’re going to say, okay, instead of sales wall. Alright. And it makes it much more easy to overcome friction.  

I’m going to tell you a story about Olivie. This guy’s awesome. Okay. When he came to me, he was really frustrated. He had closed, nothing. Very, very upset. You could see it in his eyes. He was so frustrated. I said, Hey, explain your call. He walked me through what he did in the call, and it was really all about their company. Well, that’s not good. That’s not how you’re going to be able to help people understand about their problem. And so we redesigned this call.

And what happened, he went from zero to 30 k from zero to 30 k in one month. As soon as he knew the process, the right way to do it. Zing he shot up, it was so cool. He immediately improved his demos, gaining confidence. There’s that word again, confidence. When you do it the right way, you have a tremendous amount of confidence. So that’s shift number one, it’s about them.  

Shift number two. Demos are not training demos, sales calls. If you’re not a software person, they are not training. Okay? Do not train them. Overexplaining leaves buyers very confused. They don’t know what’s going on when you throw a lot at them. Don’t over explain because it’s going to leave them confused and a worse it leaves them scared that your system is too hard. They don’t want to get started with something’s difficult going to take a lot of time. Overexplaining does that when you do it right.

The prospect can see for themselves. They can see using the program is easy. And they see themselves in it. They put themselves in there saying oh this is simple. I could do this. I can click those buttons make that happen. When they see value, they’re saving time or money or both. And they’re able to see how it solves their problems. It also makes your demos much shorter and more focused. You’re focused on them and their issues. Instead of talking about the whole system and making it a training on how to do it. This is going to lead to a much higher success rate. For both you and them, by the way. They will be successful when you’re successful selling them because your product will help them. So it’s really important that shift two.  

Shift three, process drives results. I talked about process earlier, but it is big time, processes needed and everything. If you’re developing a software and building it out, you need a process and how to engineer that and have the team be able to make it happen. Well, there’s process and product and engineering. And there’s marketing process even but the sales process is forgotten. People don’t think like Yeah, just throw it out there somebody’s gonna buy. Well guess what, if you don’t have a sales process, it leads to wasted leads.

Leads cost money, you spent money or time to generate leads, and those leads are coming in. And you don’t have a sales process to be able to handle them. They’re wasted, they’re gone. Don’t let that happen. These leads here coming in off the printer or whatever, boom, right into the shredder. Not sure how they made that happen. It’s pretty slick. Anyway, don’t waste your leads by not having a process. So when you do it, right, no lead is wasted. conversations are maximized. It delivers more deals, and higher close rates. The process is what’s going to deliver the deals, it’s going to make the closes happen when you do things the right way. And you get higher revenue per account that allows you to scale. Okay, so it’s really, really important that process is key.   

So recapping, those three shifts. It’s not about you, it’s about them. Demos are not training and process drives results. Those are the three shifts. Okay, let’s talk about what happens when you do it the right way. A little case study, when talking about Greg. He’s from Planlist.io, awesome, dude, really super motivated to make things happen. And so he dove in and wanted to make that process happen. What happened was he had a lot of leads, but booked very few demos, and very few close. So he was getting people to be aware, but he couldn’t engage and he couldn’t close. Big time needed pillars. Well, he didn’t know why. So he came to me, he was almost about to quit, by the way.

This great product almost about to give up. Well, what we did was we put in the three steps. We learned how to implement then. And he quadrupled his close rates went from 6% to 25%. He quadrupled, just like that. And he also started averaging much more demos. He had about one per week when he came to me, it started at three per day. In addition he was engaging much more, and he had a 273% revenue increase. It was the best move ever. Yeah, that was that was good 273% revenue increase, we’d all take that. So this is the type of results that you can get when you do things the right way. I tried to figure all this out myself. Not fun to do at all.

I lost 1000s of dollars, millions in opportunity I don’t even want to think how much I could have closed. If I had the right method. When I first got started. There was a lot of business that came in and went right out. Okay, I tried the trial and error, it didn’t work. If you do trial and error trying to just figure out and guess and hope you’re gonna burn through money and you’re going to risk failure. We talked about those 92% of software companies that fail, a lot of them tried things that they were hoping would work. No chance. That’s the danger of attempting trial and error is mostly error. 

But there’s another option, stop that trial and error and learn how to scale who’s from someone who’s done it before. Okay, it can take a lot of months or years took me years to figure it out. I wish I had someone to show me the roadmap. And so that’s what I do is I help software founders by showing them the exact right ways to scale how I did it multiple times. How I exited multiple times, and how others that I’ve shown are able to take this and scale.

Okay, I want to offer you that path. Book a call with me. Right there. MattWolch.com/book, we’ll uncover exactly what’s holding you back. We’ll figure out what is going on right now and where you’re looking to go. And really all have an understanding after that, if I can help you or not. If so, I’ll give you all the details. And we can get started really quickly. But doesn’t start until you booked that call. So mattwolach.com/book is where you go. And that’s where we can determine how we can make these shifts for you. Okay, your future Your starts now. Thank you very much. I hope that this helped. I hope this got you where you needed to go. And I hope that you enjoy the rest of the summit. Thank you for coming. Have a great day. Bye bye.