Brian Bates is Senior Vice President of Business Development at Lively Root, an online indoor plant business. He began his career in business development at Barnes & Noble before transitioning to Follett, which was acquired by Varsity Group in 2008. Brian then spent seven years heading sales at Rafter, Inc., a course materials management technology company. Before joining Lively Root, he worked at Content Analytics (which was acquired by Syndigo), where he grew less than $1M in revenues to over $10M in 2.5 years.
In our conversation, Brian talks about how he works to scale small startups and their sales cycles, including by implementing tools to “slow things down in order to run really fast.” He discusses his multipronged approach to go-to-market strategy, which includes conferences, webinars, referrals, and lead gen through manual phone calls. Brian also shares his mantra that, to scale a business effectively, you have to work with the people who built it.
Lively Root is a four-year-old company with two farms — one in San Diego, California, and the other in Northern Miami, Florida. These are huge farms, at scale, that supply Lively Root and large garden centers like Home Depot, Lowes, etc.
During COVID, several businesses thought that selling plants online would be a good idea. Since then, the model has taken off. At Lively Root, we differentiate ourselves through our customer experience, offerings, and ability to serve the business gifting market.
On the service side, when you walk into Home Depot or a Lowe’s Garden Center, it can be difficult to find someone to talk with who understands exactly what you’re looking for and can help you find the right plant. We focus on that experience and the quality of the plants that we deliver.
Our consumer business is geared toward a traditional ecommerce experience for people who are buying a plant or two, maybe for their home or as a gift. I manage everything outside of ecommerce, working directly with businesses, the promotional market, and our B2B channels. These partners run events or have new-hire programs where they gift plants as part of onboarding. We’ve also had a lot of luck working with the promotions market and gifting platforms, like Sugarwish, Thnks, and many others.
Typically, when I get involved in a company, it has received a new round of funding and is looking to scale. As a start, you want to work with the folks who have done the heavy lifting to date, understand their roles and responsibilities, and look to retain them above all else. Sometimes that doesn’t work.
The next step is to continue on the path of growth and initiate a process on the client side that involves interviewing customers to find out why they bought the product or service, what they found interesting, and what they think we could do better.
I then incorporate what I have learned while working with clients and with different folks across the business, particularly in product and sales, to develop processes and systems that can scale.
When you’re new, you must show that you’re not coming in to ruffle feathers, but to be a partner. I do client interviews early on and involve colleagues in these interviews, which helps incorporate the team into the process.
I’m known to go in and do client interviews on day two or three at a new company. I like to pull my colleagues into these interviews so they can participate. When I do that, I find that a lot of times they say, “Oh my gosh, we’ve never spoken to the clients like this. We’ve never actually asked these types of questions.” Incorporating the team into that process is very helpful.
My initial go-to is to develop and define the company’s sales cycle and its stages. Doing so right away enables us to categorize the team’s prospects into stages, and then use software to manage the sales process. From a B2B sales and marketing perspective, one of the first things I typically find in very early-stage companies — through no one’s fault since everyone is running so fast — is that there’s no sales pipeline process. As a result, I start by looking at the list of prospects to figure out what’s going on. What stages are they in? Are they just folks we’ve gotten on the phone and had a great conversation with, or do they have a proposal and might just be stuck? Are they negotiating with us, etc.?
From there, I’m able to have black-and-white conversations about where the business is from a scalability perspective as it relates to sales and marketing. Next, I integrate a software solution. I’ve been preferential to Monday.com in recent years. I particularly love that it’s very low-lift and doesn’t require a consultant. It’s a straightforward platform for me to work with. I can customize it for our business and easily collaborate with team members.
If you are setting up tools to “slow things down to run really fast,” it’s essential to have every department be a part of that process. To ensure that the customer success team is involved and on board with what sales is selling, I like to include a stage in the buying cycle where customer success folks are pulled in. Later when we deliver the proposal, there’s a checkbox that indicates something has been presented to our internal customer success team so that they can sign off on the service and the software proposal that we’re delivering to the end user client.
By pulling in the customer success team at this stage, you’re also performing a presumptive close with the prospect. This way, the prospect is already thinking, “OK, I’m onboarding now. I’m moving in this direction.” And at the same time, you’re giving peace of mind to your customer success team. They’re meeting the client, asking questions, and understanding what’s ahead of them.
Yes, precisely that. Everyone jumps up and down with an 11–15 percent close rate from lead to close, but you have to dig in and look at each stage. What are your conversion rates by stage as you move through the pipeline and the funnel? It’s super critical that you understand that, because that can help identify where you’re getting stuck. If you have a 40 percent conversion rate at one stage, but only a 10 percent conversation rate at another stage, what’s happening? What needs to change within that stage?
You may not get a clear answer for a while, but it’s something you want to start looking at from day one so that you have the data to analyze in 6-12 months. From there, forecasting does get very predictable, which will make your founder and leadership teams happy.
A successful SaaS go-to-market strategy for growth must include a multi-pronged approach: conferences, webinars, and lead generation through phone calls and referrals. Leveraging existing clients through testimonial videos and case studies is crucial. Incorporating content from client interviews and feedback into sales and marketing messaging is also important.
This feedback helps develop product capabilities, endears clients to your business, and can significantly accelerate growth. Just remember to really take care of those clients who have helped you in those early phases.
I’ve devised a tactic to incorporate content from client interviews and feedback sessions into the go-to-market sales and marketing messaging. I like to ask questions like “What is it that you like about the product? What are other people within the business saying it does for you? What do you see within the market that’s not working and made you look at us?”
You can take those recorded interview sessions and turn them into product marketing tools for your sales team and your website, giving them to your product managers to develop actual capabilities. This also endears you to the first clients who helped you build the business. Clients start to feel special because they are working with you on this process to scale to the next level.
I think it’s true that hiring is the hardest part of scaling a startup. The people who you bring in early make or break the team. When I’m hiring for sales and marketing, I look for determination and the ability to handle rejection. Experience in startup environments is also valuable. Teams that have previously worked together and know each other’s strengths and weaknesses are ideal.
It’s important to realize there will be many highs and lows. Stay humble, test new things, and seek mentors and sponsors within the business who can not only help you, but also be there for you when you encounter tough choices. Having a “kitchen cabinet” of resources and individuals can be valuable as decisions come up in your career.
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