Bootstrapped Web

Brian Casel: 00:09

This is Bootstrapped Web episode 60. It's the podcast for you, the founder who learns by doing as you bootstrap your business online. And today, we're talking about the process of taking visitors to leads to customers and all the organizations and systems that need to go in place there. So as always, I am Brian. And I'm Jordan.

Brian Casel: 00:34

So, Jordan, looking forward to this one. And yeah. So how are you doing this week?

Jordan Gal: 00:39

I'm doing pretty well. Yeah. I'm, getting ready to go on vacation next week. Very excited. Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 00:45

Yeah. And I I like today's topic. It's something, that I've given a lot of thought to and have set aside, you know, time and resources to to get done. Maybe it sounds like we're just talking about a sales funnel, but I think what we'll talk about, what people will will hear is that reality is always a little more complicated than the ideal of everything's online, everything's automated, everything can be tracked using Google Analytics, and, you know, there there are no curveballs. Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 01:18

So that that's that's not the not the reality.

Brian Casel: 01:20

I mean, seems so easy. Oh, you just plug in Google Analytics and you set up a dashboard or you plug in Kissmetrics or something like that, and and it it everything just magically falls into place in terms of the sales funnel. And and those kind of tools help for sure, but there there's a lot that goes in between, you know, taking a visitor to becoming a lead and then kind of nurturing that lead and and getting them on board. And a lot of it is done manually and, you know, for a while, I know in in my case, and I think a lot of other other people out there, it's just kind of like a mess of of phone calls and emails and tweets and like you're just like, you know, fielding all these different messages and then you're following up with people whenever you remember to do it, and then you can like bring on you can like manually hustle your way to get a couple of customers or a couple of paying clients. But at a certain point, you need to kinda reel it all in and get a system in place so that all these messages and things get funneled into a streamlined process, And that's the, essentially, the sales process.

Brian Casel: 02:23

So we're gonna go through a few different case studies from from our experience and kind of break things down and try to try to figure out that question. How do we how do we get all this organized? But first Yes. First, why don't we get into some updates, Jordan? What is new this week?

Jordan Gal: 02:38

Well, the only really thing new to you know, of any note is that I have, started moving toward bringing on a cofounder. So I know I'm, you know, about a year into the business, but I think cofounder's still the appropriate terminology. Right? This isn't just somebody who I wanna hire, as a as an employee. This is someone I wanna bring on as a as a partner.

Brian Casel: 03:02

That's an exciting step.

Jordan Gal: 03:04

Really exciting. And this is this is what the business needs. This is what what what I need. Right? This person is technical with experience and is really good at the product side of things.

Jordan Gal: 03:16

And so what we are looking at is marrying our complimentary skill sets. Right? I am marketing and sales, and when I focus on product and onboarding and the technical stuff, it's I'm just not the best person for it. And this this person, I hope to, one day soon be able to talk about names and specifics, but not quite yet, is very good at at the product and technical and managing developers and not as good at the sales and marketing. And both of us have kind of been frustrated in our experiences, by trying to do everything instead of focusing on what we're good at.

Jordan Gal: 03:55

So this really seems like, this is what the business needs to kind of get into the next gear. I think about the 2015 and where I could get on my own. And, I would own more of the business if I did it on my own, but I just don't think I would get nearly as far as if I teamed up with someone with this complementary skill set and gave away a piece of the business. I think I'd I'd still be a lot better off, and so would the business.

Brian Casel: 04:22

Yeah. I think it's I think it's very smart. I think, you know, from what you've told me about it, the the complementary skill sets clearly and and the experience that both of you kinda bring to the table, it it definitely makes a lot of sense. So

Jordan Gal: 04:34

Yeah. Time to go faster.

Brian Casel: 04:35

Excited to hear how how that rolls out.

Jordan Gal: 04:38

Cool. I'll I'll keep you updated, obviously. And how about you?

Brian Casel: 04:41

What are you up to? Let's see. Right now, I'm putting together a quick announcement for a a new free workshop that I'll be putting out to to my list. And any of you listening, if you're interested, that'll be happening on Thursday, February 26. It'll be a webinar workshop all about productized services, you know, just kinda taking some of the some of the key lessons and the core concepts from the productized course and and also some of the stories from from our students.

Brian Casel: 05:13

We've had a, you know, like, over a 100 students now go through the course. So it's been really excited to exciting for me to see, you know, what people are working on, how people are developing, and even some new strategies and concepts that that are coming together, especially around, like, combining software with service and that sort of thing. So I'll be talking all about that if you wanna join me for about an hour or so. It's happening on Thursday, February 26, and you can get your spot at Cast Jam dot com slash workshop. What else?

Brian Casel: 05:43

So right now, I'm also bringing on a new person to to run the sales side of Restaurant Engine, basically handle all the consultation calls, and we'll talk much more about that whole process, later in this episode of of how that that works. But, it's kind of exciting to to bring on someone who's really just gonna be focused on that. I have another person on the team who's been doing that, but she's been shifting over into, like, the customer service side. So it'll be good to kinda separate those roles. And then, you know, I I'm still still planning and thinking a lot about starting this kind of like a new product and planning all the first steps there and basically just figuring out the best way to get into conversations with potential or at least the target customers, and I gotta try to figure out who that target customer is.

Brian Casel: 06:33

I have some ideas, but, couple different groups that I wanna start speaking to and figure out who is resonating most with this idea so so that I can keep it focused. So that would be the first step on that. And it's it's a little bit hard juggling all these different things at once, but I think I have a a good plan of attack in in place. It's just I I guess the challenge is finding enough hours and enough days in the week.

Jordan Gal: 07:03

Cool. Well, sounds like you'll be eating some of the Bootstrap Web dog food in in validation and reaching out to people.

Brian Casel: 07:11

Yeah. Absolutely. I'm actually, know, on my I I plan to go back to one of our previous episodes when you talk through your cold email outreach and and the and the validation methods that you've done in the past. So I'm gonna definitely revisit those for sure.

Jordan Gal: 07:25

Yeah. It's some, I mean, wanna call it dirty work. There's nothing wrong with it.

Brian Casel: 07:30

It's

Jordan Gal: 07:30

just it's manual, but you're definitely a lot better off for for doing it.

Brian Casel: 07:35

Well, you

Jordan Gal: 07:35

know, the thing Risking it.

Brian Casel: 07:36

I mean, this this idea is something that I've personally been thinking a lot about over over the last couple of years and been dying to do it someday. And and now I feel like I'm finally gonna start working on it. But I just wanna get it out of my own head and just start talking to other people. That's you know, before I do anything else, I just need to talk to people who might Right. Also find it valuable.

Brian Casel: 07:58

So we'll see.

Jordan Gal: 07:59

See see if you're on the right track. Alright. Good stuff. So today's episode and topic really comes from me coming to you and saying, Brian, I I have a problem. I I'm trying to figure something out.

Jordan Gal: 08:12

Right? So when we say this is it's like a business funnel. Right? It's not a it's not a sales funnel that's online or going from a lead magnet to a nurture sequence to an offer. It's more complicated than that.

Jordan Gal: 08:27

It's it's for your whole business. And and up until now, it's worked. Whatever I've done has worked because it's just it was just me. So right now, anything that comes in from any source, any lead, whether it's someone email emailing me directly or a tweet or a forum post or a free trial without talking to me ever or whatever it is, it just all goes to me. I put it in my CRM, and I use one page CRM, which is great in its simplicity because all it focuses on is the next action.

Jordan Gal: 09:00

So if it's somebody that just reaches out randomly, I say follow-up to see if they're interested. Right? Easy enough. If somebody else comes in and starts a free trial, I say, follow-up tomorrow to make sure see if they need any help launching their campaign. So it's been simple and and it works, but that's not able to handle thirty, forty, 50 free trials a month like I'm trying to get to as soon as possible.

Jordan Gal: 09:24

So you with Restaurant Engine have have dealt with this, and and that's that that's kind of what I need help on. What do I need to put in place so that I can handle these different sources of leads, these different types of leads, people that go directly to free trial and and have it organized so that I can keep pushing on marketing knowing the leads that I'm driving in are being handled

Brian Casel: 09:46

Yeah. Proper. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think in the early days of any business or even ongoing for a while, it's so easy to get into this place where you have leads coming in. Like, the whether it's referrals or you have marketing stuff that that and and traffic that's coming in, and you've got you've even got some paying customers, and and you've been able to kinda hustle them in through your in onto your service.

Brian Casel: 10:12

You know, it it just gets disorganized at a certain point. I know for a while with in the, like, first year of Restaurant Engine, everything was just coming through my Gmail. I would just get people emailing requests or questions or interest, and they they would just come in as in emails in my inbox, and then I would just literally just reply to them. And then and then I I added, follow-up dot c c as as a way to make sure that I'm reminding myself to follow-up with people. And that kind of worked for a couple months, but then even that got out out of hand in terms of, just, you know, leads falling through the cracks and people just not getting that follow-up.

Brian Casel: 10:52

And then, of course, the the team started to grow, so I needed something that is collaborative and scalable and and a systematic way to handle all all the new leads that that come through. And I I guess I shouldn't even say that we have, like, a totally overwhelming number of of leads. Like, we have a moderate amount, really. But, but what but I think what we've built today is is really easy to manage and easy for anyone, whether it's me or my team or, like, the next week, we have a new salesperson coming in, he can just plug in to to this process that we've built. And so okay.

Brian Casel: 11:30

So what I wanna do here is I'll just go really quickly through the sequence of how our sales process works on on Restaurant Engine. And so at a high level, I'll do the sequence, and then I'll I'll fill in some some of the gaps in, like, the technical details. And then from there, we'll we'll talk about CartHook and and get into your case study.

Jordan Gal: 11:49

Going from one point o to two point o. And the only thing I just wanna point out to to people listening is is to note how how real life is messy, that that phone calls and demos and Skype calls and emails and all this stuff happens all at once. And that that's the real challenge that we're talking about. It's easy to say, let me set up a landing page that captures email addresses and then sends out these triggered emails and then makes an offer and let's see

Brian Casel: 12:20

And then you go sit on the beach somewhere and the thing just I mean, come on.

Jordan Gal: 12:24

Right. That that's cool, but that's not what's happening. And and it's not us. It's not just Bootstrap. It's it's everybody.

Jordan Gal: 12:30

Yeah. Right? I I looked into a product called SalesLoft. These guys have grown ridiculously over the past year. It's a SaaS for salespeople.

Jordan Gal: 12:39

Right? I wanted to ask them about one of their tools. Demo. Real salesperson, a living human being emailing me saying, hey, let's set up a demo. Here's a link.

Jordan Gal: 12:50

Here's a time. Let's jump on Skype. Let me show you my screen. So it's not just people who are kinda scrapping to get any lead possible. This is the way people are doing it, and that's why it's more complicated than than it looks.

Brian Casel: 13:03

Even even at scale, larger companies, still doing that that personal touch and that personal follow-up or live demos or whatever it takes. And, I mean, you you know, it's so easy for us to look at any of these popular, SaaS products or successful product businesses out there and look at their website and be like, oh, it's so simple and streamlined. And there's the sign up button and and that founder must be off living the good life right now. Look, I mean, behind the scenes, there's so much manual legwork and following up and but, you know, going from from that, like, kind of a kind of a mess to a systematic way that even if you have to take a day off or bring in someone new to take over that role, it's it's done in a predictable fashion. So that's that's what what the goal is here for this episode to just help you start to think about that as a goal.

Brian Casel: 14:00

I mean, everyone's business is completely different as you'll see between our businesses. You know? So you can't exactly apply exactly what one of us does to what you're doing, but you can understand what that goal is is to is to get everything funneled into the same track and get us all on the same, going in the same direction so that we all end up at the at the same station at the end.

Jordan Gal: 14:23

Yeah. Document what you can, establish the processes for what you can. But you should know regardless of how unique your business is, you can do it. You just have to deal with some pain to to figure out what the what the contours of your sales funnel actually look like in real life. You don't have to jam it into a purely online, fully automated fantasy sales funnel.

Jordan Gal: 14:45

Yeah. Good for you. Good for you if you can do that. The truth is the majority of people will not be able to to accomplish that. Yep.

Jordan Gal: 14:52

Cool. So let's let's take a look at what you've done with Restaurant Engine, And let yeah. Let's let's hear you kinda run through what what you're talking about here. What Alright. System is and then the technical.

Brian Casel: 15:02

Yeah. So so Restaurant Engine, this is basically the process that a a visitor goes through as they go from visitor to lead to customer. And I actually detailed all of this in a post that I that I wrote last year on my blog called a system for selling, and that's where I detail every every aspect of this. And and it's even got, like, a technical setup guide if you wanna try setting up some of these pieces. So anyway, starts with visitors coming to our website.

Brian Casel: 15:30

We have got a number of traffic sources. Most of it is organic. And visitors get to a consultation form. So every call to action, everything that we're doing, we're we're kind of pushing visitors toward that button, request a consultation, that takes them to a form on our website where they can fill in their details. We actually ask for quite a bit of that on that form, like their name, restaurant name, email, phone number, website if they have one, then they answer a couple things like, they are they interested in online ordering?

Brian Casel: 16:04

Are they a food truck? Are they established restaurant? Are they a startup restaurant? So these are these are all the key information that we need to know. They fill in that form, hit hit submit.

Brian Casel: 16:14

And what happens from there is that form is connected to our Trello. And Trello is what we use as a CRM. The and so we have like one big board in Trello, which is our CRM. A card is created for every new lead. We we kind of call them lead cards in Trello.

Brian Casel: 16:32

And all of that information that they filled in on the form is then copied into the card in Trello in the description. We do that using Zapier. So one person on my team, whoever's running the sales at at any given moment, will go into Trello on a daily basis and go to that first list, incoming leads. And they just go through that list, and those are the people who who need to be called today or tomorrow, like new new inbound consultation requests. That person calls them up, and they and we have procedures in place for them to follow-up with every new lead.

Brian Casel: 17:11

So if we if we get a voicemail on the first day, we'll follow-up the next day, and then the next day. And then once you do connect with the person, we move the card over into the next into the next list in Trello. And we're we we have a couple of these lists, like stages that they get through. Basically, inbound lead, attempted first contact, didn't connect, and then connected with the person. And then they're they're looking promising, like they're showing interest, and they say that, yes.

Brian Casel: 17:39

We'll probably sign up soon. We'll put them into into a new list. And then they either sign up or they disappear or they say they're not interested. So so the salesperson will manually call them up and then send an email follow-up after every phone call, and then they'll manually write their notes in the card for that lead in Trello. What what did they talk about?

Brian Casel: 18:04

What what are the things that they asked about and whatnot? They will they also set a due date on our card so that the salesperson is reminded to follow-up, whether that's to follow-up tomorrow or follow-up next week. Meanwhile, in the background, starting from the day that they requested the consultation, that form is also integrated with with drip. So we'll we'll start an email campaign to anyone who requests a consultation, and that campaign is it it's it includes a couple of different case studies from customers. It includes some of, the key benefits or, like, highlighting certain features.

Brian Casel: 18:46

And the these campaigns are actually tailored based on what the person entered in that consultation form. So if someone specifies that they're a food truck, one of the case studies that they're gonna get is is one of our food truck customers. If they specify that they're interested in online ordering, they're gonna get an email all about how online ordering works and some of the key benefits there. So this stuff is kind of they're they're receiving these this drip campaign kind of in the background while our sales team is calling them and following up personally over email. After usually, like, two or three touches with the customer, they'll they'll hopefully, you know, decide to sign up, and that either happens with the salesperson over the phone.

Brian Casel: 19:33

So, literally, our salesperson just fills in our sign up form for the customer, enters their details, gets it over the phone. Or the customer will come back to our website and and sign up. They'll they'll get to the sign up form, and they'll create their account. At that point, the customer and all their details are then handed off to our support team, and they begin setting up the customer's website. So and and they'll also reach out to the customer and initiate with them, like, hey.

Brian Casel: 20:03

You know, my name is Kate, and and we're and and I'm ready to, and I'm here to help you set up your new website. Here here are the list of things that we need to get from you, like your food menu, your Facebook page, and whatnot. And then they just take it from there. And now the customer is a paying customer, and they're being serviced, and and it's all working. So that's the the basically the process.

Brian Casel: 20:25

And now some of the details. So I mentioned those consultation forms on our website. Those are powered by Gravity Forms, which is a plug in for WordPress. Pretty powerful. You can do a lot of lot of cool things with with Gravity Forms.

Brian Casel: 20:40

That is connected to Trello, and we use Zapier to connect those two. And that makes it easy to take all the entered information from Gravity Forms and put it into Trello. There's also a connection between Gravity Forms and Drip, and that's how we connect those two. What else? Oh, and we also use HelpScout for all of the email follow-up, even sales emails.

Jordan Gal: 21:05

So Yeah. This I found fascinating.

Brian Casel: 21:07

Yeah. So, like, we don't only use HelpScout for support. We also use it for sales. So we have two email inboxes. One is, support@restaurantengine.com, and the other is info@restaurantengine.com.

Brian Casel: 21:20

And the info one is kind of like our sales line or sales email inbox. And and so when our team is following up with leads, like, every time they call them, they'll send an email follow-up. Here's what we talked about, by the way, and and and here's the link to sign up whenever you're ready. They do that from HelpScout for for a few reasons, but mainly, you know, it's easy to to I mean, number one, every person on our team can can kinda send emails from info@restaurantengine.com. This way, sales conversations are not kind of, like, locked up in one person's email inbox.

Brian Casel: 21:55

We all have access to to this stuff. The other thing that is nice is that, like, Help Scout, you you can have a URL that points right to that conversation. So when my team and I are talking in in Slack and someone has a question, like, how do I answer this customer's question? They can just ping me with with the link to the Help Scout conversation. I just click it and take a look.

Brian Casel: 22:19

And then I might write a note in HelpScout, like, right on that conversation. So it just makes it really easy to to collaborate within one, inbox.

Jordan Gal: 22:28

Yeah. It makes it everything's trackable. It's all in the same place from the very beginning of the relationship. Yeah. It doesn't depend on one person's inbox, so you can use it when the person's away or anyone could jump in on it.

Jordan Gal: 22:41

And it's shareable. It's like the semi public, you know, if the person gets leaves the job, can't do it anymore or something, it's you don't lose that information. It's really really interesting.

Brian Casel: 22:50

Yeah. And then once the lead becomes a customer, then it's also really easy for my support team to grab the stuff that they were talking about in in the presales conversations. They can grab all that information and all the details and kind of, like, port it over to the website setup and as they get them started on the service. So, like, all of that information is, like, streamlined and just passed along from one side to the next.

Jordan Gal: 23:20

And then from then on, once they become a customer, you're emailing them using support at just different different Yeah.

Brian Casel: 23:26

Yeah. Exactly. And the other thing is we use Slack internally to to talk to each other. And so when a customer signs up, I have some automation in place to automatically ping my support team in Slack. So they get a message as soon as someone signs up so that they can quickly initiate that setup and get them going, pretty quickly.

Jordan Gal: 23:48

Right. That way, it's not lingering, and no one needs to constantly check the email inbox to see if anyone new has signed up. It's it's that important of an email that it should be Yeah. Looked at looked at right away. So Right.

Jordan Gal: 24:00

It's not Like, it's at that a point. 100 times a day.

Brian Casel: 24:02

Yeah. Because at that point, somebody has just paid. And and they're and they're expecting to get going quickly. And if Right. And if that email gets lost and or if that takes too long, then

Jordan Gal: 24:14

Right. It's the first experience.

Brian Casel: 24:15

Yeah. Exactly. Very good. And so so, yeah. That's that's basically it.

Brian Casel: 24:20

So now, should we shift over to CartHook and see?

Jordan Gal: 24:23

Sure. Let's just embarrass me. Why don't you after we talk about your automation and slick integrations and

Brian Casel: 24:30

I should I should say, though. I mean, number one, it it has taken us over three years to get to this point, and there were plenty of messy details and and problems along the way that led to figuring out, oh, we we need a way to have all these little things in place. And then number two is even though we have these systems in place, they absolutely still break down from time to time. Like

Jordan Gal: 24:51

Right.

Brian Casel: 24:51

You know, it's it's very easy for a salesperson to miss a day and then follow ups are not being made, you know. Or, you know, just like that that kind of stuff happens.

Jordan Gal: 25:02

So Right. You you can eliminate the human element as much as possible, but you're still dealing with with humans. Yeah. Cool. So it's it's great to hear more of those details and and see them right as I need to transition.

Jordan Gal: 25:16

Right? I think I'm at where where most people are that are running their business on their own. It it doesn't make sense to over systemize and over complicate this process when it's just one person. So I I do use a CRM. Right?

Jordan Gal: 25:34

It's not like I'm only using everything in email. So I'll describe my my situation relatively simple. I use one page CRM and everything goes into there. So it's it's good in that it's centralized. It's one place.

Jordan Gal: 25:52

It's bad because it's not organized and everything is lumped in into the same category. So, yes, I can choose different statuses. This person's a customer, but it's pretty obvious that the what I owe or what I told or what I hope to take the next action for a paying customer who's been around for six months, who said, hey, Jordan, can we jump on the phone? I have a question. That should not be lumped in to the exact same process and system as someone who started their free trial and is two weeks in, or someone who just downloaded a lead magnet and I should follow-up.

Brian Casel: 26:27

Yeah. So, I mean, it is interesting because your business is is different. You're running a SaaS, which is it's kind of a in a way, it's more of a traditional SaaS model and that you have a free trial. And that so in a sense, like, your free trial is kind of like my consultation request.

Jordan Gal: 26:44

Yes. That, like, starts. Right.

Brian Casel: 26:47

That's that's the point that which person is a lead.

Jordan Gal: 26:50

Yes. This a real lead. Not a not a prospect, someone who downloaded something or an email address or something like that. This is actually, like yes. A free trial, think, is the typical, point.

Jordan Gal: 27:00

So so even if CardHook is more of a traditional SaaS situation, it's still ridiculous to think that everything's gonna be done in an automated way or through email. Right. Like, anyone who wants to get on the phone, anyone who wants to do a demo, like, you're not gonna say no. So if if that's what's gonna happen, then you need this is what I need to build now. This this two point o version needs to be able to handle these things where I'm not doing everything.

Jordan Gal: 27:28

Right? Everything right now is going through jordan@karthook.com, and I'm responding. I'm following up with people. I'm reaching out to people, cold. I'm emailing existing customers, and now that I want to be kind of unleashed to be able to do marketing activities all day.

Jordan Gal: 27:48

Alright. I hired someone to do sales. I'm gonna bring on this cofounder to do a lot of this this other stuff. It doesn't make sense for me to do everything.

Brian Casel: 27:55

So so I have a couple questions for you. I mean, number one, is there any step before the free trial that you would consider like a pre sales step? Like, I mean, maybe it's right now, it's just people emailing you questions about it before they sign up or

Jordan Gal: 28:11

So there's I have I have a lead magnet on the site, like, on the homepage that people download.

Brian Casel: 28:16

And that's educational. That's like a free gift kind of kind of thing. Right?

Jordan Gal: 28:20

Yes. Give me your email address. I'll give you I use a sample campaign. So it basically is just a a good looking PDF document that shows what Cardhook looks like, what the email looks like, why certain things are in the email are a certain way, and why they're important, you know, why it's important to send an abandoned cart email within the first sixty minutes, and why it should be this way or that way, and then a little bit of my contact information. But

Brian Casel: 28:47

Okay. So so once someone does that, it's still kind of like they're still in, like, automation mode subscribers. They're getting stuff from you, but but they're not necessarily, very Now warm or hot leads at this point.

Jordan Gal: 29:02

Exactly right. And that's why I lump those people in with the same exact, in the same bucket as if somebody emailed me and said, hey. I saw your Mixergy interview. I'm interested in using CardHook. I I see that as the same thing because all it is, it's somebody raising their hand and saying, I'm interested.

Jordan Gal: 29:18

So now the goal is to get that person into a free trial. Once they're in a free trial, totally different process. That's what

Brian Casel: 29:25

you and talked there should be separation there. Right? Like, there there so someone who just downloaded the free lead magnet

Jordan Gal: 29:34

Yep.

Brian Casel: 29:35

May or may not really be serious about signing up for CardHook. They might just be looking for best practices with with abandoned card emails, looking to learn something for free, which is fine. Yeah. It's fine. But but someone who emails you, saw you on a podcast or something, and they and they're asking and they're saying they're interested, that should be a lead that they get followed up with.

Jordan Gal: 29:59

Right now, I have them lumped into the into the same bucket, but, I I agree that it's like the separation is almost between sales and marketing. And marketing is generating these prospects who are interested in the content, who are interested in cart abandonment in general and ecommerce in general. And what we're trying to do is push them into actually raising their hands and saying, I'm interested in cart hooks specifically. Right. And that's when they can be kind of lumped into the same category someone who emailed and said, I'm interested in using CardHook.

Brian Casel: 30:29

Yeah. Okay. And then like, so currently, when somebody signs up for the free trial, what happens from there today?

Jordan Gal: 30:37

From there, it goes into the next the next goal is to launch their free trial. So now we're talking onboarding, which is something that we have, we spent a lot of time on the past few weeks. And right now, our onboarding is a lot better. It's it's not great, but it's it's good. And so when someone signs up for a free trial, our version of activation, right, which is just to say more likely to become a paying customer, is launching their abandoned cart email campaign.

Jordan Gal: 31:09

And in order to launch, you have to put in some information that's required in order to send an email on your behalf. You have to set up your campaigns, those emails that go out, and then you have to complete the integration with your site. So once they start a free trial, then the goal is to activate or launch the campaign. And then once they launch, then the goal is thirty days later to turn them into a paying customer.

Brian Casel: 31:33

Okay. So all those steps, activating, installing the code, setting up the email templates, they're doing that themselves? Or are you calling them, or are you emailing them? Or

Jordan Gal: 31:47

It used to require more manual work on my end and and shifting them from one status to another. And but that that is half automated and will be almost entirely automated because so in order to launch a campaign, we're having that be entirely self serve so someone can do everything on their own to launch.

Brian Casel: 32:11

I mean, I know that they can do it themselves if, but do you still reach out to them to to make sure that they're getting everything they need?

Jordan Gal: 32:20

Yeah. You you you have to.

Brian Casel: 32:21

So how do you how do you do that? Are you sending an email or calling them? Or what are you doing?

Jordan Gal: 32:26

I'm sending an email. I'm sending an email that right now is manual, but can very quickly be automated. Mhmm. Right? And and right there's so there's right.

Jordan Gal: 32:36

This is getting into more of the the details of what needs to be set up.

Brian Casel: 32:39

But Right.

Jordan Gal: 32:39

Right segment IO and these event based triggers that can lead either using GetTrip or using customer.io, Those are the life cycle emails that are currently manual and will be, automated over the next few weeks. Cool. Right? So when someone signs up right now, I send an email that basically says, thanks so much for signing up. I'm Jordan, the founder of Cardhook.

Jordan Gal: 33:06

I saw that you signed up, and here's my contact info. I'd love to talk if you're available. Here's my Calendly link. And then then we can check up to see how they are in the process. Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 33:21

And then if if they launch, then I basically write back or if they right. So that's the that's the manual part. That's it would be silly not to follow-up with someone if they don't launch their campaign.

Brian Casel: 33:31

And then They've

Jordan Gal: 33:32

gone so far.

Brian Casel: 33:33

And then what happens after that? Like, let's say they're they're activated. They've they've set everything up. They're running. They're still on the free trial.

Brian Casel: 33:41

Yes. And then I guess the next hurdle is like, are they are are they actually getting abandoned carts? Say or saving abandoned carts. Right?

Jordan Gal: 33:50

Exactly. Right. So we want instead of just not communicating for thirty days and then at the end saying, so what do you think? Do you wanna sign on? We proactively send an update once a week saying, here is your performance after one week of running CardHook.

Jordan Gal: 34:04

Here's your performance after two weeks. Here's after three weeks. And just a heads up, next week, when I follow-up for the fourth time toward the end of the free trial, I'll yeah. I I, like, foreshadow that on the fourth one, I'm gonna say, I want you to jump on board as a paying customer. So I just give a little bit of a warning that next week will be the last one before the free trial ends.

Brian Casel: 34:23

Are you in the free trial? Are you getting the credit card info upfront or after the thirty days?

Jordan Gal: 34:29

After the thirty days, which is not what I would recommend to most SaaS businesses. But because I see Cardhook as a drug dealer in effect, let's say, I want I want them to taste the good stuff

Brian Casel: 34:42

before they're do you have any issues with just too many sign ups that are that are, like, kicking the tires or just not serious or they they're they sign up and they disappear?

Jordan Gal: 34:53

Not not to the extent that it's it's a problem or an issue. Yeah. Because to to go through the process, you have to have an ecommerce store. Have to integrate. You have to go through a certain amount of of of friction to launch.

Jordan Gal: 35:08

So people who launch, you know, they're they're they're real potential customers.

Brian Casel: 35:12

Yeah. Right.

Jordan Gal: 35:13

Yeah. So so all this stuff that we're talking about, I see is relatively straightforward. Like, yes, certain events should trigger certain campaigns, and I have no idea how to do that, but other people do, and I can pay them to do it. Right? So whenever someone signs up, that should trigger one campaign.

Jordan Gal: 35:29

As soon as they complete setup, it should trigger a different campaign. Right? The truth is if they complete step one of three, a different email should be sent. If they complete steps one and two but not three, a different one. So you can get as granular granular as you want.

Jordan Gal: 35:43

Yeah. But that stuff I see is relatively easy. The tricky part is before the free trial, the stuff that you have such a nice system built out for.

Brian Casel: 35:51

Yeah. I mean, that's where I think a CRM really comes in. You know, I think I I think okay. So I I think that post free trial, a lot of that can be automated. And that's not to say that I mean, post free trial sign up.

Brian Casel: 36:09

They're not a customer yet, but they're in their free trial.

Jordan Gal: 36:11

Yes.

Brian Casel: 36:12

A lot of that can be automated with the with the drip campaigns whatnot, like, based on their behavior in inside the app and and all that. But that's not to say that you should not still manually reach out to Oh, yeah. Certain people in the free trial, of course. But that maybe even that reminder events to you Yes. To say, right, this person needs help.

Brian Casel: 36:33

Call them now.

Jordan Gal: 36:34

Exactly. Right. It should not rely on memory or actively checking something to see how many weeks into the free trial are they.

Brian Casel: 36:42

It should be right? Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 36:44

This the fourth update email was just sent, send me an email or ping me in Slack or something to that ex to that effect to say, if they don't respond, if they don't put in their credit card info, then send this email template or call.

Brian Casel: 36:59

Yeah. Or like yeah. Like like, certain sequence of events happened or they or failed to happen, which should give you an alert that says this person is at risk of of leaving or whatever. Right. Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 37:12

Yeah. I heard recently a founder talk about their process. As soon as anyone signs up, they get a they get a phone call. That's it. I I love that.

Jordan Gal: 37:21

Right? So all it would mean it doesn't even it wouldn't mean anything, actually, because during our setup process, we take the phone number on step one. So as soon as step one is completed, right, I should get notified that there's a free trial. And then when step one is completed with the phone number, I should get an an email or a ping or notification of some sort, and I should just pick up the phone right there and say, hey.

Dan Norris: 37:43

Call

Jordan Gal: 37:44

them. I saw you signed up. Thanks so much. What can we do for you? How can I help?

Brian Casel: 37:47

Yeah. Exactly.

Jordan Gal: 37:48

For the foreseeable future, you know, I I can do that.

Brian Casel: 37:52

Yeah. Totally. And even even in the future, you you can have a person who who gets that ping instead of you, you

Jordan Gal: 37:58

know. Right.

Brian Casel: 38:00

Okay. So but there's that other piece before the free trial.

Jordan Gal: 38:04

That's that's the

Brian Casel: 38:05

the hard part leads. That's that's where I think the CRM really comes in.

Jordan Gal: 38:10

Well, CRM, yes. But the there there are a few things that happen that make it confusing. So I love I love the suggestion on using Help Scout because one of the one of the biggest issues I have is how do I get everything out of my my email address? Out of jordan@carthook.com is to have absolutely everything go through there is, you know, it's getting a little unreasonable. And so getting that activity out sounds like a great idea, in using HelpScout to have an email that's more like for the team.

Jordan Gal: 38:46

So that's good. The I think the the difficulty I have is for example, yesterday, I wrote a post on a ecommerce forum. I got three leads out of it. You know, that's that's great, but I got an email saying, hey. I saw your post.

Jordan Gal: 39:06

I'm interested. Alright? Or one person just signed up. Now I need to get that into the CRM so that it goes through the same process everybody else, instead of me just emailing them back and forth and manually putting them into the CRM and then Alright. Manually setting a next action.

Brian Casel: 39:19

So so a random email comes in, they found you wherever a forum, saw you on a podcast, doesn't matter. They they send you an email. You you receive an email. You that can get forwarded right into your CRM. I mean, almost every CRM has, an email inbox that you could forward the email to so that they're getting tracked.

Brian Casel: 39:40

And and the way that I do so, like, sometimes so with Help Scout, sometimes customers send me directly questions that are customer support questions.

Jordan Gal: 39:50

Right. What do you do?

Brian Casel: 39:51

I forward it directly to support@restaurantengine.com, and that goes straight into Help Scout, and then my team takes Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 40:00

So as long as you don't feel the need to personally respond.

Brian Casel: 40:04

Yeah. And and if they if it's something that I that I want the sales team to respond to, then I'll forward it to info@restaurantengine.com. And then it gets into Help Scout as a ticket. And if it's urgent, then then what I would do is I would forward it into help scout, and then grab the help scout link, and ping my teammate on Slack, and say, hey, this person needs to reply today. Here's the link to that email.

Jordan Gal: 40:28

Very nice. Okay. The yeah. I love I'm gonna look into I I looked at the help scout just for for support, but I didn't I didn't think that I didn't think about doing it this way.

Brian Casel: 40:42

I should mention that, like, all the I mean, there are a lot of help desk tools out there that all pretty much do the same thing as Help Scout these days. Mhmm. Not I mean, not all of them are are as as nice as others, but, there are a group of really nice ones that I think what I love about it is that it's a, invisible to the customer. You know, they just see an email. And that's what I love about it.

Brian Casel: 41:06

Whereas, like, I can't stand it when I I hate to shit on Zendesk, but whenever a customer uses Zendesk, it just I mean, a company that I'm a customer of uses Zendesk. It's like

Jordan Gal: 41:18

Yeah. You have to deal with it instead of

Brian Casel: 41:20

just I have to

Jordan Gal: 41:21

I have to have

Brian Casel: 41:21

a login to their just to submit my question. It's so annoying.

Jordan Gal: 41:25

Is that what it is? Strange. So that yeah. Regardless, you know, Help Scout will send a bill to for all all the all the publicity. But what we're saying is to to centralize the email communication in help desk software, but not just for support tickets, also for just communication in in general.

Jordan Gal: 41:44

Mhmm.

Brian Casel: 41:45

Yeah. I do like having the separation, though, between, like, two mailboxes inside Help Scout. So I I would not wanna mix presales questions, leads, and stuff with our queue of paying customer support questions. That's that's why we separate support at restaurantengine.com and info@restaurantengine.com.

Jordan Gal: 42:05

Yeah. I I I like that because I I feel that already in having them everyone lumped into the same thing. It's, you know, a a paying customer that's been with with us for ten months asks the question, like, that that's a priority. It it should be treated differently.

Brian Casel: 42:20

Yeah. And And again, like, that's that's how we separate it, but in reality, things get messy. Like, a a lot of Yeah. Existing paying customers will remember us from the presales days, and they would email us at info at restaurant com or brian@restaurant.com. And then I need to just move that conversation back into support where it belongs.

Brian Casel: 42:41

You know? Like but you can you can move conversations around inside HelpScout, and the customer doesn't need to know what's going on.

Jordan Gal: 42:49

You know? And I'm I'm guessing you can have little tags that you can say, you know, presales or or paying customer.

Brian Casel: 42:55

Tags Or status. Not really tags in Help Scout. So yeah. Or notes of some sort. The the nice thing about HelpScout and viewing a customer in HelpScout is that it on the on the right column, you have a link to all previous conversations with that customer, you know, regardless of of of what mailbox they're in.

Brian Casel: 43:21

So it's very easy to to look at today's email that you received from them and say, like, okay. There are these five emails from the past couple of weeks. It's easy to jump in between them. And you can even, like, merge merge conversations and stuff like that. But, yeah, like, tagging customers, like, we do that in inside drip to make sure that they're getting the right campaigns and emails and whatnot.

Brian Casel: 43:45

But yeah.

Jordan Gal: 43:47

Cool. And then the the the the last piece that I I would ask you on, I I see a separation between marketing and sales, and I'm trying to figure out where they merge onto the same track. Right? The the easy places at free trials. Regardless of whether they came in through a blog post or they came in through a cold outbound email, once once that prospect turns into a free trial, everybody that starts a free trial should be treated on the same track in the same way with the same process.

Jordan Gal: 44:20

It's it's before that that still kinda needs to be figured out. So, an outbound sales prospect kinda needs to get handled differently until the point where they get into a demo. And some people will have a demo and some people won't. Some people just sign up for a free trial without talking to us. Some people do the demo.

Jordan Gal: 44:43

And and so that's Yeah. It's like the is it these separate buckets and processes for each thing?

Brian Casel: 44:49

Well, I mean, I I do try to standardize that to one bucket for everyone. And and for us, that's getting to the consultation. But we have a lot of different pages on our website and like different things that are interesting to different people. We do offer a a video demo, like a twenty five minute long. Let me walk you walk you through restaurant engine and how the main things work so you can take a look.

Brian Casel: 45:14

On that demo page, we have our consultation form along the right side. As you're watching the demo, you can request your consultation. So we actually have like two different forms, two different pages. Like, some customers will just go straight to a consultation, and that's like a very stripped down request your consultation form. And other customers will be interested in that live demo.

Brian Casel: 45:39

So they'll go to the demo page, but there, they can request their consultation. And then both of those forms feed into the the same Trello.

Jordan Gal: 45:46

So that sounds like that sounds like the right goal in terms of simp simplifying things.

Brian Casel: 45:51

Yeah. And then Well, there's actually a third one now. We're starting to do some, like, targeted campaigns and whatnot that point to a consultation landing page, like, optimized, you know, for ads and whatnot. And that so it's like a third form, which again, just funnels people into the same place.

Jordan Gal: 46:11

Right. Well, let let yeah. That's that's that sounds like a reasonable way to think about it where whether it's an outbound campaign, a Facebook ads campaign, a a nurture sequence from a lead magnet, you do want to point all of those towards your conversion points, whether that's a demo, a consultation, or a free trial. Because the the the truth is you might make both offers to the same to the same person. I I mean, I know in in the sample campaign that lead magnet, I offer I offer both.

Brian Casel: 46:47

Yeah. I mean, why not? You know? And then

Jordan Gal: 46:48

Why not?

Brian Casel: 46:49

Like It's Yeah.

Jordan Gal: 46:49

Here's a free trial

Brian Casel: 46:50

a link. Little bit more automation going on like with in drip, When once someone views our demo, which, by the way, we ask for their email address to to begin watching that demo. It's it's optional. They can skip past it, but most people don't. They enter their email address.

Brian Casel: 47:08

They start watching the the video demo. And then what is it? Like, if they I think if they if they watch the demo, but they did not request the consultation, again, they have that consultation form right alongside the demo. If they don't fill out that consultation form, then from DRIP, like, two days later, they're gonna get an email saying, like, hey. Did you enjoy the demo?

Brian Casel: 47:30

Can I answer any other questions? Right. So And and now this this brings up a good point because we get a lot of, like, replies to that. They'll just reply to that email and be like, yeah. I'm interested.

Brian Casel: 47:40

I have a question about something. Can you call me? Or or we'll get random people come into our contact form and just saying, need a restaurant website. Can you help me? Or we get people on our live chat saying, you know, I'm interested.

Brian Casel: 47:52

But they so they don't necessarily make it to the consultation form, but they're they're reaching out to us. They're saying, hey. Talk to me. I'm interested.

Jordan Gal: 48:01

Yeah. It's those that throw me off. What what do you do with the all these different So things that come in.

Brian Casel: 48:06

It's it's simple. We just manually we of course, we reply to them and and say, if if they haven't given us our their phone number yet, we'll say, like, yeah. Sure. Like, here's our phone number. Tell us what your phone number is, and we'll we can talk to you, like, today or tomorrow.

Brian Casel: 48:20

And and at that point, my team would then create manually their card in Trello. So now they're into our system and now and now everything else kind of falls into place. It doesn't matter how they like most people come in through the consultation form, but maybe 15% just come in randomly, and then we just manually add them in.

Jordan Gal: 48:41

So it's just dealing with these these random edge cases and pushing them toward the process that you want them to go through. Yeah. Yeah. Instead of yeah. And that's that's sounds like it'll take a little self training.

Jordan Gal: 48:53

Right? Someone just responds and my instinct is to just like engage and start emailing them back and forth. And the the the truth is even if I wanna do that first, they still need to go into the process.

Brian Casel: 49:05

Yeah. And, you know, what however, the most efficient way to do that is, like, maybe as you're emailing, you can BCC your CRM so that they get in that way. Or if if you manually do it, you know, you can do it that way. You know, whatever works. And then over time, like, what we've started started to add is, like, actual procedures that we all follow and then email templates.

Brian Casel: 49:31

Like, that will email responses based on which stage in the sales cycle, like, which follow-up step we're on. We have different email templates that we use, and then we'll like, the my team is instructed to tailor those based on what you've been talking about with the customer.

Jordan Gal: 49:47

Yeah. That's, you know, canned responses in Gmail. That's a unbelievably useful feature.

Brian Casel: 49:52

Yeah. And same same feature in HelpScout. You know?

Jordan Gal: 49:55

Right. Yeah. I have so many of those. You know? And I you know, like, the common questions, the common objections, you know?

Jordan Gal: 50:01

Like, BigCommerce already has an abandoned cart thing built in. Why why would I use you? You know? It's like, instead of writing out those three paragraphs every time, just save it. Mhmm.

Jordan Gal: 50:10

Cool. That sounds like an asset to build up over time. Totally. And that's the only way things are gonna work if Yep. On on a on a bigger scale.

Jordan Gal: 50:20

Cool. Well, I'm looking forward to to kinda working on this and then maybe talking about it in in a few months' time and and saying, This is this is how things kinda shaped up, and these are the tools we used, and this is alright. This is what's working, this is needs to be improved.

Brian Casel: 50:35

Yeah. Absolutely. So we'll should we wrap it up there?

Jordan Gal: 50:40

Yeah. I think we should. I think it's something that a lot of people deal with. There's a lot of tools out there. It's hard to fit exactly into your business.

Jordan Gal: 50:50

But if you gotta do it, then you gotta you gotta find a way to do it. So thanks, you know, for sharing how how you guys, how you have figured it out. So it's it's nice to kinda be inspired by the fact that it can be done regardless of how complicated or unique your your business is.

Brian Casel: 51:04

Yep. So as always, you should head over to bootstrappedweb.com, and that's where, you can you can get on on our on our email list and so that you can get notified when we have a new episode come out. We do our best to get them out every Thursday. Sometimes I'm late and and we get it out on Friday. But and if, you know, if you're enjoying the show, please head over to iTunes, leave us a five star review, and and leave us a note.

Brian Casel: 51:27

Tell us what you think. We really appreciate it.

Jordan Gal: 51:30

Alright. Take it easy. Alright. Have a great weekend.

Brian Casel: 51:32

Later, Jordan. You too. Bye. See you.