Matt Mayfield's Blog on Business

I regularly get requests about what tools I use for selling B2B with new products yet create a system that can scale.

These tools are set up around a small sales team, B2B, and non-regional customer base. For larger scale customers & sales teams, all roads lead to the Salesforce ecosystem, but for those starting this ecosystem is too expensive and too complex. Even if your company has an existing Salesforce.com-class tech stack, there is an argument for using this cheaper and more agile tools in the beginning as you are trying to figure things out. All of these tools are either free or below $50/month to use.

• G-Suite: While I almost never use the Gmail web interface, everything is made to work with G-suite or Microsoft Live365.
  • If your customer base is “old school” (eg. manufacturing), you might be better choosing Microsoft/Teams instead of G-Suite/Meet
  • I love the automation with Google Docs. GAS is the Java Script language for automation– 20 line custom code can do almost anything (see Fiverr).
• Lemlist: Outbound emails are a great way to start a B2B sales. Lemlist has a wonderful account “warmup” feature.
  • Look at Topo Consulting for resourcing around outbound email (SDR).
  • eMail lists can be sourced via Fiverr.
  • YAMM is a free product that does 70% of Lemlist.
• Pipedrive: I try many different CRM systems, but I keep going back to Pipedrive: price, setup simplicity, intuitive interface for salespeople, and great ecosystem of agile products with existing integrations keep me coming back. If you spent more than a day setting it up, you did something very, very wrong. I tend to pay for the middle version to get 2-way Gmail sync.
  • Hubspot is another common choice. It is free and tends to be optimized better for digitial marketing. However, I find it poor in the actual deal closing process, the interface is always confusing for me, and the featureless you quickly need require eye-watering cost.
• Elementor + WordPress: This is a universal theme builder that allows “normals” to design the theme. My trick (especially as I was first learning it) was to use a free, standard WordPress theme that got me close and then paid a Fiverr to re-create the concept in Elementor– from there I could continue to iterate. Learning WordPress is essential. Do no use external website building services– you need to design content and layout together and you need to update regularly.
• Calendly: Let your customers choose their time slot to talk with you. Take up rate is often surprisingly strong.
• Zoom: This is still the easiest for most customers to use (if they are not corporate Microsoft people– then use teams or something old-school with a dial in phone number). Google Meet is not bad and is fully free with G-Suite.
  • I love Macs for reliability of cameras and microphones (less good on the old-school tools like Skype for business), but headphones will always sound better to customers as long as they work reliably. If more than one of you will talk on the same microphone, look at Jabra Speak series speakerphones
  • Pro tip, record the video meetings and review them with a mentor– I usually have no problem getting a user’s permission, but I also have used a stealth recording tool and ethically made myself comfortable by erasing it immediately after the review..
• Various localization services: local phone, local mailing address. Most US mobile phones are locked from calling internationally by default so it is often important to have a local number they can call.
• Linkedin Sales Navigator: Expensive, but worth it as a research tool. At the time of writing this article, there are some very powerful Linkedin based lead generation techniques and tools that help with that; however, I am not currently using those so better I save that for a later post.
• Fiverr: I love this platform. People with very specific skills (eg. get all my MX records on my web hosting sorted so I stay off spam lists) offer their service for very low prices and still earn good money because of this specialization. Be aware, 1/5 of my engagements are not positive, but the price, speed, and quality of the other 4 more than offsets the one bad experience. Common services I use: website optimization (speed especially), website theme transitions, security setup for website & email, lead list mining, and custom integrations.
• Hellosign or SignNow for digital signature. Both are good and speed up the engagement process.
• Other products I find myself using: Zendesk for customer support (once you have lots of customers and need dedicated customer support), Hover (for Domain registration), Stripe for credit card processing (remember US customers cannot easily pay by wire transfer– their system is completely different), Quickbooks for US accounting, Transferwise for cross-currency transactions.