How To Succeed In A Competitive Market

About this video

Dan Martell coaches Marnie Stockman, CEO of Lifecycle Insights, which helps IT business owners sell to execs, not techs, by automating reports and tying assessments to business pains for quarterly reviews. Her first question: how to target a competitor’s customers when buyers do not search for the terms on Google and instead ask peer groups. Martell teaches ‘core targeting’ — asking what else your ideal customer buys, using what he calls the fund, follow, frequent model — and hunting for artefacts that reveal competitor users: a widget or tool embedded on customer websites whose HTML can be scraped, tools like builtwith.com that show what technology a site uses, job postings that mention technologies, partnership/integration connections, and referral/traffic sources that send the competitor traffic, which you can then build a more lucrative relationship with. He mentions grey- and black-hat tactics others use, such as scraping private Facebook groups or hiring away a competitor’s sales rep for their book, while saying he only does what he would be comfortable seeing on the homepage of the Wall Street Journal. Her second question: at 500,000 in ARR (not MRR) aiming for 1 million in six months, what will break? Martell gives levels: product first, then promotion — he targets a CAC payback below 90 days for bootstrapped coaching clients, and 30-60 days using setup/implementation fees — then process: documenting marketing, sales, onboarding and customer-success playbooks, noting a client who found a customer that had not paid an invoice in 17 months because there was no accounts receivable process. Skipping playbooks, he warns, makes companies fall backwards under the weight of their growth.

Key takeaways

• To reach a competitor’s customers, use core targeting (Martell’s fund, follow, frequent model): find what else they buy, who partners with or integrates with the competitor, and which referral sources send the competitor traffic.
• Look for identifying artefacts: embedded widgets or competitor names in website HTML, technology lookups via builtwith.com, and job postings that mention the technologies a company uses.
• Stay ethical: Martell says he is aware of grey/black-hat tactics but only uses strategies he would be comfortable having published on the homepage of the Wall Street Journal.
• When scaling from $500k toward $1M ARR, fix levels in order — product, then promotion with CAC payback below 90 days (30-60 days via setup/implementation fees), then process.
• Document playbooks for marketing, sales, handoffs, onboarding and customer monitoring before growth forces it; his cautionary example was a customer who had not paid an invoice in 17 months for lack of an accounts receivable process.

Episode details: published March 7, 2022 · 14:48 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dan Martell’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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