Product Startup Podcast Episode 218: Build a Hardware Sales Process

00:00:00 Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learn how to design and execute a sales process for selling your hardware invention from a sales strategist who's worked with over 150 product manufacturers.

00:00:09 Kevin Mako: This is the Product Startup Podcast, a show to learn from top leaders in hardware product development, prototyping, manufacturing, product selling, and everything in between.

00:00:19 Kevin Mako: Hosted by Kevin Mako, the leading expert on product development for hardware startups.

00:00:25 Kevin Mako: Welcome back, everyone. I'm very excited to introduce Wesleyne Whittaker to the show.

00:00:29 Kevin Mako: Wesleyne is CEO.

00:00:30 Kevin Mako: of Transformed Sales. A company that has worked with over 150 manufacturers and product brands on building sales processes to grow quickly and effectively.

00:00:38 Kevin Mako: Today, Wesleyne will share valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on what a sales process is, the key components and subcomponents of a well-designed sales process, and how to run that process well to ensure you launch and grow your hardware product sales successfully. Now, on to the episode.

00:00:54 Kevin Mako: This show is produced by Mako Design, the original firm providing end-to-end consumer product development service.

00:01:00 Kevin Mako: services tailored specifically to hardware startups, small manufacturers, and inventors.

00:01:05 Kevin Mako: Take your product from idea to store shelves at MakoDesign.com. Now on to the episode.

00:01:13 Kevin Mako: Hi, Wesleyne. Welcome to the show.

00:01:15 Wesleyne Whittaker: Hi, thank you so much for having me, Kevin. I'm excited to chat with you.

00:01:18 Kevin Mako: We're excited to chat to you today about sales processes for a new hardware product that a new hardware

00:01:25 Kevin Mako: entrepreneur is trying to get to market. So whether you've been in the sales space or whether you've been in the

00:01:30 Kevin Mako: product space, it actually doesn't matter.

00:01:32 Kevin Mako: Today you're going to learn the processes, if it's your first time in either of those,

00:01:35 Kevin Mako: to really figure out how to build a process, why it's important and how to execute on it well.

00:01:40 Kevin Mako: But before we get into all that great stuff, Wesleyne, just give us a bit of a backstory of how

00:01:44 Kevin Mako: you became the success story that you are today.

00:01:46 Wesleyne Whittaker: So I'm a recovering chemist, and I started my career in the petrochemical industry as a failure

00:01:51 Wesleyne Whittaker: analysis chemist. And then my first step into the world of sales was actually selling capital

00:01:56 Wesleyne Whittaker: equipment. So I have the great pleasure of walking around, you know, with my hard hat and

00:02:01 Wesleyne Whittaker: my set of tools really focusing on selling capital equipment into plants. And I decided

00:02:06 Wesleyne Whittaker: what I really wanted to do was help manufacturers really focus on building strong sales organization

00:02:12 Wesleyne Whittaker: through process, through training, and through consulting.

00:02:14 Kevin Mako: That's amazing. You've worked now with

00:02:16 Kevin Mako: over 150 manufacturers over a long period of time in sales figuring out how to sell better,

00:02:22 Kevin Mako: how to sell more product or how to sell a new product for the first time to the market. And a lot of that

00:02:28 Kevin Mako: comes back to the actual process. The nice thing I want to mention here, especially for hard

00:02:31 Kevin Mako: we're just kind of tuning in or just getting the idea of the sales process. Maybe you're just in

00:02:36 Kevin Mako: development. Maybe you're still even in the idea phase or you're getting into manufacturing

00:02:39 Kevin Mako: and you're starting to look forward to some of these things that you may be doing with your product

00:02:44 Kevin Mako: down the road. The important thing here is if you can follow some of the processes and best

00:02:48 Kevin Mako: practices, it actually simplifies it a lot. And that's what we're trying to do today to show us to really

00:02:53 Kevin Mako: empower you as any person out there selling your product, how you yourself can be great at selling

00:02:58 Kevin Mako: your product for the very first time. So, Wesleyne, let's start big picture here. What is the

00:03:04 Wesleyne Whittaker: definition of sales process? A sales process is a proven and repeatable way that you walk yourself

00:03:11 Wesleyne Whittaker: through a sales funnel. You might have heard of a funnel or a pipeline or all of these different

00:03:16 Wesleyne Whittaker: terms that people use to get from a person that is out there in the world all the way to a client

00:03:23 Wesleyne Whittaker: who's purchasing your items who's using them. So that's literally what your process is.

00:03:28 Wesleyne Whittaker: a step by step from person coming in to person saying, I want to buy your hardware

00:03:34 Wesleyne Whittaker: product. I am a raving fan. I am a customer.

00:03:37 Kevin Mako: Love it. So let's drop into what the actual

00:03:40 Kevin Mako: processes are. What are the main components of a sales process, just at a high level? So what you want

00:03:46 Wesleyne Whittaker: to do is I like to break it into three big buckets, right? And I go prospect, nurture clothes, right?

00:03:53 Wesleyne Whittaker: And so what we're thinking about is in that prospecting bucket. It is how am I engaging the

00:03:58 Wesleyne Whittaker: clients? How am I attracting them? What am I doing in my marketing? What am I doing, you know,

00:04:02 Wesleyne Whittaker: in my outreach? And now they say, hey, I'm raising my hand. I'm kind of interested in what you're doing.

00:04:08 Wesleyne Whittaker: How do I nurture them? What am I doing in terms of my discovery meetings, my email drip campaign? And then

00:04:15 Wesleyne Whittaker: once they're like, okay, I'm ready. They're raising their hand. It's all about how do I close this person?

00:04:21 Wesleyne Whittaker: How do I handle objections? And how do I ensure that this one person that I spent X number of dollars acquiring is a

00:04:27 Wesleyne Whittaker: repeat customer. They don't just buy one thing, but they come back and buy more of my hardware,

00:04:32 Wesleyne Whittaker: buy more of my products, buy more of the things that I'm offering.

00:04:35 Kevin Mako: That's powerful. You can look at

00:04:36 Kevin Mako: this in many different contexts as well as a hardware startup on there. Know that there's a lot of different

00:04:41 Kevin Mako: ways to sell product. You can sell it direct to customers. And this could be, well, how are you selling

00:04:45 Kevin Mako: one to one to somebody who has expressed interest either on your website or through your Shopify,

00:04:49 Kevin Mako: through your crowdfunding campaign, whatever else. But this can also include more serious or larger

00:04:56 Kevin Mako: customers, which is your wholesalers, your retailers, any sort of distribution company

00:05:00 Kevin Mako: that's buying potentially in volume, which is a great way for a hardware company to sell

00:05:04 Kevin Mako: because you can go from selling zero to a thousand with one decision maker, one person who's

00:05:09 Kevin Mako: interested. So let's start figuring out how to do this well, Wesleyne. Just give us a bit of best

00:05:14 Kevin Mako: practices around that prospecting piece. And we'll go through it piece by piece and learn some of the

00:05:19 Kevin Mako: tips and tricks that you've seen over the last 15 years of doing manufacturing sales on how to really

00:05:23 Kevin Mako: do each of these key components well for a hardware startup.

00:05:26 Wesleyne Whittaker: So when we think about prospecting, one of the things that you said that is really important is to

00:05:30 Wesleyne Whittaker: understand who is on the end, on the other side of the table from you. Am I focusing on a 50-year-old

00:05:38 Wesleyne Whittaker: man who is doing his own projects around the house? Or am I focusing on a 50-year-old executive who is

00:05:43 Wesleyne Whittaker: thinking about all of the distributors that I have under my tutelage? So we first want to focus on who was

00:05:49 Wesleyne Whittaker: that ideal client and how do they consume information and what do I need to give them? And so when

00:05:54 Wesleyne Whittaker: more prospecting for them, I like to say that we can't just do it in a vacuum. We need to focus

00:06:00 Wesleyne Whittaker: on digital channels. We need to focus on in-person channels. And we need to focus on educating people.

00:06:05 Wesleyne Whittaker: So the key to prospecting well is to targeting your ideal client in a multitude of fashions.

00:06:12 Wesleyne Whittaker: And I'll just double down on education, which is when people don't use that often, it's educate them and

00:06:18 Wesleyne Whittaker: they will come. That's what I like to say. Once you educate that ideal client, they will then come to

00:06:23 Wesleyne Whittaker: you. So you educate them through your blog post, through your newsletter, through handwritten notes,

00:06:28 Wesleyne Whittaker: through doing webinars, through writing e-books. It doesn't really matter. It's just you need to

00:06:33 Wesleyne Whittaker: educate people on the impact of buying your product, how your product is actually helping them solve

00:06:38 Kevin Mako: a challenge. That's powerful because especially as a hardware startup, probably the reason you're in this

00:06:44 Kevin Mako: space is because you came up with some kind of an innovation, something that makes your product

00:06:48 Kevin Mako: better than whatever else is out there, something that's helping people or solving a pain point,

00:06:53 Kevin Mako: creating opportunities from them, whatever it might be. But you've got that figured out

00:06:57 Kevin Mako: on the hardware side. You've produced said thing and it does this stuff great. But everything,

00:07:02 Kevin Mako: every product out there requires that element of education. Of course, if you've got a great

00:07:06 Kevin Mako: product, the better the product is, probably the easier it will be to educate. But it doesn't matter

00:07:10 Kevin Mako: what way you look at it. But point being is that you really need to focus on ensuring that you've

00:07:14 Kevin Mako: closed that gap between interest and understanding. By doing that, that's your education sphere.

00:07:19 Kevin Mako: And that can bring a lot of different pieces. That has an all.

00:07:23 Kevin Mako: a whole bunch of different components. But just recognizing the very fact that your job is to educate

00:07:27 Kevin Mako: will help you as a founder who's really been focused on all those engineering details is to pull yourself

00:07:32 Kevin Mako: out of the weeds and then focus on big picture, really what sells that ideal customer that you've

00:07:37 Wesleyne Whittaker: considered. Absolutely. You hit the nail on the head. As a hardware startup founder, you're really

00:07:43 Wesleyne Whittaker: smart. There's a lot of great things in your head. And the biggest challenge, the biggest thing

00:07:49 Wesleyne Whittaker: that I have seen people in the industry do is to not get the information.

00:07:53 Wesleyne Whittaker: in their head out, to not help educating their prospective clients and their buyers on why

00:07:58 Wesleyne Whittaker: their particular product is the best. So use the knowledge in your head. You already know it.

00:08:05 Wesleyne Whittaker: It's already in there. And don't feel like you have to sit down and write. If you're like me and you like

00:08:10 Wesleyne Whittaker: to talk, record a video. Just record a video and then you can get the transcript and you can use that.

00:08:15 Wesleyne Whittaker: If you're a writer, write it out. But get it out of your head. That is the key to success in sales within this

00:08:22 Wesleyne Whittaker: industry. You have to get the knowledge out of your head. I like the fact that you talked about

00:08:26 Kevin Mako: different mediums as well. And you've even identified different ways. You've talked about video writing.

00:08:30 Kevin Mako: And of course, there can be so many derivatives of those. So as a hardware startup, just start adding to

00:08:36 Kevin Mako: these various channels. You're going to educate on socials. You're going to educate on your website,

00:08:40 Kevin Mako: of course. You're going to educate on maybe a brochure. And then you're going to have all these kind

00:08:44 Kevin Mako: of video testimonial pieces that you can put towards it, whether it's customers or using the product

00:08:48 Kevin Mako: or you talking about it or whatever else. Just start getting these.

00:08:52 Kevin Mako: pieces of education onto paper because the more of them that you have comes back to your concept

00:08:57 Kevin Mako: Wesleyne that you're talking about this multi-channel approach. So as a customer, you may have different

00:09:02 Kevin Mako: ways of digesting information. And as such, the video might not work for one person. And therefore,

00:09:08 Kevin Mako: they want to see the writing and vice versa on a different person. You don't want to miss those opportunities.

00:09:12 Kevin Mako: You want to make sure that you're providing education in a bunch of different formats and in a bunch

00:09:16 Kevin Mako: of different ways so that all of the different prospective customers can be educated enough to then switch

00:09:20 Kevin Mako: to that next phase of the process, which is when you're actually trying to get them to

00:09:25 Wesleyne Whittaker: close the deal. Yes. And, you know, the thing is you can, I want to give a very tactical tip

00:09:31 Wesleyne Whittaker: because you can get so much from one median, right? So let's say you get on, you record a video. And from

00:09:37 Wesleyne Whittaker: that video, you pull the transcript. From that transcript, you can get social media bits and pieces.

00:09:43 Wesleyne Whittaker: You can pull clips of the video and use that on social media. And in that nurture phase, which is the next

00:09:49 Wesleyne Whittaker: phase in our sales process. We need to nurture people with emails. And so again, education.

00:09:55 Wesleyne Whittaker: I'm putting you guys in the hardware manufacturing fields in a place that you're comfortable. You are

00:10:01 Wesleyne Whittaker: comfortable with knowledge. So I want you to realize in your nurture emails when you're getting

00:10:06 Wesleyne Whittaker: on discovery calls with people, when you're really helping people understand how your product is solving

00:10:12 Wesleyne Whittaker: their challenges, you can do that in a place that you're comfortable. So if you feel like I really am

00:10:19 Wesleyne Whittaker: not that comfortable doing face-to-face meetings because I'm more a back of the office kind of person,

00:10:25 Wesleyne Whittaker: have a phone call. It's okay. If you don't like getting on video, do a phone call. If you're more of that,

00:10:31 Wesleyne Whittaker: I want to see you face-to-face, then go to that person. But in that nurture phase, it's really important that you

00:10:37 Wesleyne Whittaker: connect with the buyer. You need to understand these are the problems that I know my ideal client is having

00:10:43 Wesleyne Whittaker: and these are the ways that I solve them. And so in these meetings, whether you have two meetings or 10 meetings,

00:10:49 Wesleyne Whittaker: Within that middle phase of nurturing and closing and handling those objections, you have to make

00:10:55 Wesleyne Whittaker: sure that you meet the customer where they are. Let's talk a bit about objections because I know

00:11:00 Kevin Mako: that's a big part of the sales process and a part of this middle nurturing phase before you're

00:11:05 Kevin Mako: actually trying to close. Just talk me through. First of all, what are objections and then how can you

00:11:10 Kevin Mako: actually be organized around objections and make sure that those aren't becoming a restriction for people

00:11:16 Wesleyne Whittaker: actually purchasing your product? The biggest objections are.

00:11:19 Wesleyne Whittaker: price, not having the authority to make a decision by themselves and timing.

00:11:25 Wesleyne Whittaker: So I'll go with the big ones. Whenever you hear a price objection, it's not about the price at all.

00:11:31 Wesleyne Whittaker: It's that you have not demonstrated the value of your product. And so it's not worth the investment.

00:11:38 Wesleyne Whittaker: So whenever you hear that, you need to take that onus on you and say, so, Mr.

00:11:43 Wesleyne Whittaker: customer, Ms. Customer, I understand that you say I'm out of your budget range or you can't

00:11:48 Wesleyne Whittaker: afford this, where did I miss the mark? What more do I need to show you to show you the value of this

00:11:55 Wesleyne Whittaker: product? Don't go into the pricing more because if you win on price, you will lose on price. So if you start

00:12:01 Wesleyne Whittaker: discounting your level, especially if this is the first product that you're selling somebody, that is

00:12:06 Wesleyne Whittaker: going to be your zero. And it's only going to go down from there. They're going to always come back and ask

00:12:10 Wesleyne Whittaker: ask for more discount and more discount until your margins are nothing. And you can't even afford

00:12:15 Wesleyne Whittaker: to service that customer because you played the price for.

00:12:19 Kevin Mako: That's so powerful, especially as a hardware startup, your product, as we talked about before, has

00:12:23 Kevin Mako: some additional value. I love how you mention it. If price is your primary objection, it's your fault

00:12:30 Kevin Mako: for not showing them why the value is not there. People look at it differently. You say,

00:12:35 Kevin Mako: if price, oh, I've got to reduce the price or I've got to increase the feature set or some other thing

00:12:39 Kevin Mako: that costs money. You're looking at it the wrong way. It actually just comes down to an explanation.

00:12:43 Kevin Mako: And I can tell you, it's a lot easier from an engineering perspective. It's a lot easier to fix

00:12:47 Kevin Mako: a marketing approach or a set of marketing materials or some messaging than it is to re-engineer the whole product,

00:12:53 Kevin Mako: either to add perceived value to it and or to reduce cost. So focus on your messaging and make sure that if

00:13:00 Kevin Mako: you have a better mousetrap, as an example, make sure that they know what's better and as such are willing

00:13:05 Kevin Mako: to pay a premium. We talk a lot about pricing on the show, especially as a hardware startup. If you've done a great

00:13:10 Kevin Mako: job of design, you've got a fresh 2024, beautiful, modern, sexy, well-designed, well-manufactured product that also

00:13:17 Kevin Mako: has some added benefits that doesn't exist in the world, you should absolutely be charging a higher

00:13:23 Kevin Mako: price than your competitors, especially as you're getting into the market. You can always offer

00:13:27 Kevin Mako: discounts and sales if you want to get some early adoption or some early customers or just some quick

00:13:32 Kevin Mako: feedback, but it's very difficult to increase your price after you've gone to market. So you might as well

00:13:36 Kevin Mako: start high, prove that your premium, as you were talking about, just be there to explain why it's worth

00:13:42 Kevin Mako: the extra money. Put your efforts there. And if you do that well, you'll not only sell the product, but you'll be

00:13:47 Kevin Mako: selling the product at a better price, thus giving you better margins to continue to grow your

00:13:50 Wesleyne Whittaker: hardware startup. Absolutely. And when I was on the other side of the aisle, actually selling

00:13:55 Wesleyne Whittaker: hardware, selling capital equipment, one of the things that I always knew is I was always the most

00:14:00 Wesleyne Whittaker: expensive. I was never the cheapest option. And so I understood that my job was to educate

00:14:07 Wesleyne Whittaker: my prospective buyers on the reason why this was a premium product. And I would always say,

00:14:13 Wesleyne Whittaker: if you want to get the, you know, run of the mill that everybody else has and you're going to

00:14:19 Wesleyne Whittaker: have to have service and you're going to have to do this and you have to invest so much on the

00:14:22 Wesleyne Whittaker: back end, why not spend this up front? And I'm guaranteeing you a X number of year warranty and

00:14:29 Wesleyne Whittaker: you're going to have this and this and this. And so the key is to make sure that you have that value

00:14:35 Wesleyne Whittaker: and that question that you ask when you have that objection is, what did I not show you? It helps

00:14:40 Wesleyne Whittaker: you, as you said with your marketing message. It helps you make sure the next

00:14:43 Wesleyne Whittaker: time, you don't lose the same way. Because another thing that I like to say is it's okay to lose,

00:14:48 Wesleyne Whittaker: but it's not okay to lose the same way twice. So if you continue to lose for the same reason over and

00:14:54 Wesleyne Whittaker: over, you're not learning from your mistake. And the onus, again, is on you to figure out what do

00:15:00 Wesleyne Whittaker: I need to do differently. If I am just going directly through Shopify or directly through

00:15:04 Wesleyne Whittaker: Amazon or whatever, just a direct-to-consumer place, and I'm getting a lot of returns for the same product,

00:15:09 Wesleyne Whittaker: there's something that's in my messaging that I'm not doing right. There's something that I'm

00:15:13 Wesleyne Whittaker: I'm not telling the consumer and they're not satisfied until the onus is on me to understand

00:15:19 Kevin Mako: that. Love it. Powerful. Okay, so let's move on from the nurturing phase to the close phase.

00:15:25 Kevin Mako: Now, you've done your work to prospect. You've got those potential interested folks in. You spend some time

00:15:30 Kevin Mako: nurturing these media forms to educate them as best as possible. Now, how do we get the pen to papers?

00:15:36 Wesleyne Whittaker: They actually close that deal and make the money. So they're going to be two different ways.

00:15:40 Wesleyne Whittaker: if we're going direct to consumer in order to close, you really want to think about what is that

00:15:45 Wesleyne Whittaker: minimum viable product? What is the least amount that I can get somebody to say yes to

00:15:51 Wesleyne Whittaker: and learn the value of the hardware product that I am producing, right? So think about the entry point

00:15:59 Wesleyne Whittaker: into that client. And then once they pay you one time, it's a lot easier for them to pay you for something

00:16:04 Wesleyne Whittaker: bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. So it's about that remarketing, the continuing to nurture,

00:16:09 Wesleyne Whittaker: picking up the phone and calling them, hey, I saw that you bought X, Y, Z. What did you think

00:16:13 Wesleyne Whittaker: about it? Okay? Here's the next thing. And so make sure that again, in your process, you have a step

00:16:18 Wesleyne Whittaker: ladder. You start here, but I want you to end here. If you're targeting business to business,

00:16:24 Wesleyne Whittaker: so you're going directly to distributors or to larger clients, what you really have to do is you have

00:16:29 Wesleyne Whittaker: to make sure that that value that we're talking about, you're clearly able to communicate your value,

00:16:37 Wesleyne Whittaker: how you are solving their problems.

00:16:39 Wesleyne Whittaker: and allowing them to see, if you don't buy my product, the risk of not buying it. If you don't

00:16:46 Wesleyne Whittaker: tap into this, what's going to happen if you use the competitor? You never mention the competitor by name.

00:16:51 Wesleyne Whittaker: You never mentioned all the bad things. Your job is to take that client on this promised land of what the

00:16:59 Wesleyne Whittaker: world will be like if they purchase your product, if they choose you as a vendor to work with, how you're

00:17:05 Wesleyne Whittaker: going to help them, not just in the problem specifically that your product solved,

00:17:12 Wesleyne Whittaker: but how are you going to help them professionally? Is this going to help them save time? Is this going

00:17:18 Wesleyne Whittaker: to help them allow one full-time person to not have to focus on manufacturing this widget over

00:17:24 Wesleyne Whittaker: and over and over again? Like, think about that, really focus on that human that you are selling to.

00:17:29 Kevin Mako: I love many of the things you mentioned just in there. One of the big ones was MVP. We talk a lot

00:17:34 Kevin Mako: about that on the show, especially from a design and development perspective. You've got this great

00:17:38 Kevin Mako: idea. Focus on that and don't worry about all these bells and whistles you think could be the

00:17:43 Kevin Mako: everything to everybody product one day. But you've actually doubled down on that, but from a sales

00:17:47 Kevin Mako: perspective. So we look at that to make it simpler, faster, more effective to get to a manufacturer product,

00:17:53 Kevin Mako: but also of the fewer features you're doing, you develop those at a world-class standard. You never,

00:17:58 Kevin Mako: especially in hardware, you never sacrifice quality. Well, how do you do that on a startup budget?

00:18:03 Kevin Mako: You focus on less features.

00:18:04 Kevin Mako: And it smooths everything out to, and including manufacturing itself. But on the sales side that

00:18:09 Kevin Mako: you're talking about, it also brings this other added value, which is lifetime value of your

00:18:15 Kevin Mako: customer base. And that's something that very few hardware entrepreneurs think about when they're launching

00:18:20 Kevin Mako: their first product. They think about, okay, well, how many sales have I made? What's the cash flow

00:18:24 Kevin Mako: and whatever else? But you're missing this other piece of equity, which is you've built this client

00:18:28 Kevin Mako: relationship and you've given them the MVP version of your product. They are very likely to buy your next

00:18:34 Kevin Mako: year version or the pro version or the accessories that you end up coming up with over the

00:18:39 Kevin Mako: next few years to build essentially a brand line of a brand portfolio. Those initial relationships

00:18:44 Kevin Mako: are powerful and it takes a lot of the stress from a hardware startup of trying to be the everything

00:18:49 Kevin Mako: to everyone, trying to compete with Fortune 500 development firms that are specifically focused on

00:18:55 Kevin Mako: that. So if you look at these Fortune 500 product companies, all the big brands, yes, of course,

00:18:59 Kevin Mako: they put a tremendous amount of design and engineering effort into being the everything to everyone

00:19:03 Kevin Mako: product.

00:19:04 Kevin Mako: However, you as a startup can't afford those same sorts of luxuries. So focus on your innovation.

00:19:08 Kevin Mako: That's a golden nugget. In addition to cracking into the market, that's your MVP, and then lever

00:19:12 Wesleyne Whittaker: up from there. Absolutely. And when I sold, when I was a salesperson, I love to, I would target

00:19:20 Wesleyne Whittaker: people who had no solution, who they weren't using the big guys. They weren't doing because I got to

00:19:25 Wesleyne Whittaker: educate them. I got to give them their first step into this world. And so by giving them their first step into

00:19:32 Wesleyne Whittaker: this world, it's like, well, what was I doing my whole life? Like, how did I even survive without

00:19:38 Wesleyne Whittaker: having your products? And the thing is, when you can educate somebody and you can give them

00:19:42 Wesleyne Whittaker: just a little bit of the promised land that they didn't know that they needed, right? Just that

00:19:46 Wesleyne Whittaker: a little leg up, you're really able to help unlock something in them. And the lifetime value of that

00:19:52 Wesleyne Whittaker: client, it is so much easier to service an existing client than to go get a new one.

00:19:57 Wesleyne Whittaker: So spend a little money up front, get them to the MVP, and then think about it.

00:20:02 Wesleyne Whittaker: Okay, from $100, where do they go?

00:20:04 Wesleyne Whittaker: $300? Then they go to $1,000. But it's a step ladder. And that is the reason that we have a process.

00:20:10 Wesleyne Whittaker: Because if we think about taking somebody from $100 product to a $10,000 product, our close rate is going to be probably like 12%.

00:20:17 Wesleyne Whittaker: It's going to be so bad because that's a huge step. But if we take them from $100 to $500 to $500, our close rate will be $50 or $60 or 70% because they now are building the value up.

00:20:29 Wesleyne Whittaker: So think about that as you're building out your problem.

00:20:32 Wesleyne Whittaker: as you're building at your sales process, where do I, how do I want to take this person through and

00:20:37 Kevin Mako: where is the end point for them? That's amazing. Wesleyne, before I let you go, I want to ask you

00:20:42 Kevin Mako: about what you're doing with your organization Transformed Sales. Talk a bit about it and how you help

00:20:47 Kevin Mako: emerging companies built their sales processes and obviously execute on those process as well.

00:20:53 Wesleyne Whittaker: Yes. So what we do is we build sales strategy. We work with startups. We work with hardware manufacturing

00:20:59 Wesleyne Whittaker: companies. And we really help look at this overarching.

00:21:02 Wesleyne Whittaker: organization, the company, where you want to be, that promised land, and we build a sales

00:21:06 Wesleyne Whittaker: strategy as well as an actionable sales process that you can hand off to someone or you can execute

00:21:12 Wesleyne Whittaker: yourself. Super helpful. What's the website for that? So I actually would love if people went to

00:21:18 Wesleyne Whittaker: askweslein.com. And there I have a little digital twin. And so you can type in questions, things that we've

00:21:25 Wesleyne Whittaker: talked about here. How do I build a sales process? How do I prospect? And you will get videos of me explaining this.

00:21:31 Wesleyne Whittaker: So ask wesleine.com.

00:21:33 Kevin Mako: Much appreciate it. As always, I'll put the links below in the show notes so anybody can click

00:21:36 Kevin Mako: through and go from there. Wesleyne, thanks so much for all your words of wisdom today on helping

00:21:40 Kevin Mako: hardware startups start selling their actual first hardware product to the market. Thanks again.

00:21:45 Wesleyne Whittaker: Thank you.

00:21:46 Kevin Mako: Appreciate it. Take care. Bye-bye.

00:21:48 Kevin Mako: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast.

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