- Where in my world that I'm talking to somebody
that after I connect, I can introduce the group.
Where can I do that?
'Cause that group is valuable.
(upbeat music)
Hey there, I'm Dan Martell, serial entrepreneur,
investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.
In this episode, I'm gonna share with you
how to use online groups
to create massive lead generation
for your software companies.
I know it's a big promise,
but stay with me, I am absolutely gonna deliver on it,
and be sure to say the I'm word
I'm gonna share with you how to get access
to my specific worksheet that I use
with all my coaching clients,
to name the group, promote the group,
to design the content structure.
You won't wanna miss that.
Let's get into it.
So I got to get full credit to my buddy Taki Moore
and my friend, Caitlin Bacher.
Both of these people, Taki my business coach.
Caitlin is one of my friends
and I'm actually fortunate enough today
to be her business coach.
But both of them do online groups like the best out there.
They literally have these online communities
of passionate potential buyers.
They love on them in a very light way
that doesn't take a bunch of bunch of time.
You're not going live
in your Facebook group four times a day,
and it produces opportunities, demand, leads
for their business.
And all the strategy I'm teaching you today,
I learned from them.
I wanna give them full credit for it
because in the past year I decided, you know what?
I feel like we need to create a pond.
We need to create a place
where people that are like us,
people that are in my community of SaaS founders,
that they can come, they can connect,
they can learn from.
And I created the scaling SaaS founders group.
It's an exclusive group.
You can't get into it.
As an agency owner, you can't get into it,
if you're not in SaaS, you can't get into it.
It's literally this group now
of I think almost 4,000 members
that is thriving, is incredibly valuable
and produces opportunities for me
to introduce our services
and serve that audience in even better way.
I wanna teach you these specific tactics and strategies
that you need to make online groups.
It doesn't matter if it's Facebook group,
a LinkedIn group or another group in another area
or some other software, Tik ToK groups eventually.
I don't know, who knows what groups
are gonna be on the internet.
It doesn't matter.
If you can create a place
where your potential best fit buyers come in
and you can love on them,
you can use these strategies
to actually add incredible amount
of demand to your SaaS business.
Number one attractive name.
Now this may sound like the most trivial step,
but trust me, if you wanna attract people to join a group,
it has to be attractive, it has to be desirable,
it has to be something that they wanna be part of
as a community.
So you don't wanna call it your company name
or worse your...
You can have a customer group if you want.
I'm talking about, if you have a Slack group,
if you have a Facebook group or LinkedIn,
you wanna name it something that is desirable.
So there's two dimension you wanna look at.
The association, so is that where people
that I aspire to be like are in scaling SaaS founders?
And what I love about scaling SaaS,
where it also works in the second one.
Is it showing people that if there's a result
or a problem they wanna solve
that this is where they're gonna learn
how to solve that problem and get a result.
So scaling SaaS founders.
So for me, it's kind of like, it's a double whammy.
If you can figure that out for yourself by all means,
but number one, you gotta name the group that is desirable,
that's attractive to your perfect fit customer.
Number two, sell it second.
To me, this is the question of how do I promote my group?
I've got a group, how do I use it?
Where do I put it?
Well, again, I've got a worksheet.
It's gonna give you a bunch of different ideas.
There's nine different strategies that you can use.
I'm just gonna share a few that I love.
Number one, people are always like,
"How do I add value on LinkedIn to reach out to people?"
Use the group, use the group.
Is literally one of the most valuable things you can give.
That's very value added.
It's not promotional saying,
"Hey, really appreciate us connecting.
There's this group I'm a member of.
Check it out, it's amazing.
It's full of people just like you.
I think you get a lot of value."
Boom, they joined the group.
"Oh, this is amazing."
In your email signature, put it in the group,
in any of your communications with the customer.
Once they join, to me, they my favourite.
Once they join your product,
you have three things they need to do.
Number one, join our free group.
So that way they can get support,
they can get excited, they can be motivated,
they can be around other people just like them.
The tide rises and all boats rise.
Well, guess what?
Your software is the boat.
If you can help all your customers succeed and get results,
then you're gonna succeed by offering the tool
that's gonna support them all.
So you wanna sell it second.
You wanna ask yourself where in my world
that I'm talking to somebody
that after I connect, I can introduce the group.
Where can I do that?
'Cause that group is valuable.
You can do it on podcast interviews,
you can do it in chat,
you can do it at an event you might be speaking
and you say, "Hey, I've got this free group.
Be sure to join it if you're this kind of person.
I'll see you online, answer all your questions in the group.
Have an amazing day, peace."
Imagine you're on stage, a thousand people,
how many people are gonna think you're gonna join the group?
You can literally say, open up your phone,
go to LinkedIn, search the name of this group,
join the group.
That's where I'm doing my Q&A, I'll see you there.
"I literally just made that up as I'm sharing with you
and I'm excited to test this.
This is gonna be amazing."
Sam, is that?
- Yeah.
- Onstage, I'm gonna share it, you're all gonna...
I mean, this is a Duh, this is one of those Duh Moments.
Anyways, so sell it second
as a huge opportunity for you to promote it
to get people into it.
Number three, filter new buyers.
This is the game changer.
This is the stuff that I learned from Taki
whereas like I saw it and it was obvious.
When people asked to join your group
'cause you don't make it like default,
they can just get in
'cause you gotta like make sure
there's a hook to jump into.
You can literally ask an intake form type of questions.
And there's three categories of questions.
Number one is a question to qualify them,
number two is to get their email address,
and number three is to ask if they need help now,
which essentially identify them as a buyers.
So that way just joined the group
creates demand and creates opportunities for your team.
So the first question is asking yourself,
what's the funnel filter?
What are the filter questions?
Probably role, like what's your role?
What's your team size?
Do you have a, in my world?
Are you the founder of SaaS product?
If you're not and you're just SaaS curious, great.
There's a bunch of great groups for that.
Not my group.
You need a SaaS product, what's the link to the product?
So we ask these questions.
The other one would be get their email.
So what I do is I have this really valuable training
that you can get.
Just tell me what email you want me to send it to.
And by doing that, you're agreeing to join my newsletter.
So now I'm building my email list.
And then the third is, are you looking for help with X?
Do you wanna schedule a growth session
with one of my skills specialists?
Yes, boom, I got your email, you're qualified
and you're building demand.
This opportunity is available to everybody.
You don't need permission to do this.
You just need the right strategy.
So make sure that you filter new buyers.
When they come in, ask those questions,
qualify them, get through email,
see if they have a need, you can support them on
and then help escalate them onto a call
with one of your product specialists
to just add pipeline to your sales process.
Number four, pre-pack your content?
So my rule for everything
is I don't wanna spend my days going live,
doing all this stuff, staying busy.
Like I have companies to run.
And if you're a busy CEO, you need to batch,
you need to structure.
So I'm gonna talk to you about like,
the idea is in your group,
you're not there to teach the how,
you're not there actually to solve their problems.
You're there to create the community,
you're there to have them help each other,
you're there to share resources that you like,
that you might've created, that you found,
that you think can support them.
You're there to prompt questions to create engagement.
So you might ask, in my community
this gets asked all the time
'cause sometimes I'll just initiate the prompt.
Is what's the best email automation software?
Holy moly, you wanna talk about a debate?
Ask that question, what's the best CRM software?
What's the best payment gateway software?
There's all these like very normal...
Who's the best investor in software?
Like there's all these questions you could ask.
Why? Because it creates engagement.
Your job in a group is to facilitate
and curate and cultivate.
It's not two to answer questions.
You wanna bring other members in the community
to help each other.
That's how you create community,
that's how you create brand.
And that is how you pre-pack your content
by sitting down in saying,
okay over the next two weeks,
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,
you can go twice a day.
What am I gonna teach?
What am I gonna prompt?
Am I gonna ask a question?
Am I gonna give something away?
Am I gonna say, "Hey, let's all connect on Instagram.
What's your Instagram link?
Post it below?
If you're a SaaS founder,
join my scaling SaaS founders group.
And I'm not saying this as content,
I'm saying literally I'm gonna link it below,
join the group so that you can see what I do
and feel free to R and D at, rob and duplicate.
I don't care.
Create your group and you could probably
just tweak my questions, tweak my content, tweak my stuff
and use it for your group.
I literally want you to win
at this strategy more than anything,
but you wanna pre-pack it so it's ready to go.
And pre-packing it for me is like pre-making my meals.
If they're already pre-made.
If you take Sunday to pre-make your meals
and you kind of put it in the little things,
you just gotta microwave it or heat it up.
It just takes less of the guesswork.
It doesn't feel effortful.
Like sometimes things just feel really hard
and you stop doing it.
I don't want you to stop doing it.
I want you to love on your customers, love on community.
And this is how you do it.
Number five, drop the hooks.
So now that you have an audience, you have a community,
you have a tonne of members, thousands of members.
How do you actually get them once they're in?
Maybe when you brought them in,
they weren't ready to get on a call, but they're there now.
How do you drop hooks?
How do you go fishing?
You've created this pond of customers.
How do you go fishing in your pond?
So the way I do it
is I'll either do an ask and leave a comment
or do a give and leave a comment.
But either way, what I'm trying to do is start chats.
I'm trying to start conversations with people
and through those chats,
that's where you're gonna find opportunity.
So you might say, "Hey, I've got this thing that I created.
Do you want a copy of it?"
Maybe it's a resource, a template, a blueprint, a script.
If you want it type this word below in the chat
and I'll send it over to via private message.
They do that, boom, you send it over
and then you ask a question, you follow up,.
This is sell by chat.
It's a whole another strategy
that I've taught on my YouTube channel.
So you can search that online.
But sell by chat to me is just a great opportunity
to engage, to qualify and then get them on a call
with one of your product specialists.
Or if you have a trial process, get them into a trial.
But it's always comes from a place of service first.
But that's how we drop hooks,
that's how we go fishing in the pond that we've created
to generate demand, to create opportunities
to build pipeline.
So five strategies to build a profitable online group
that generates massive demand
and opportunities for your SaaS business.
Number one, start with an attractive name,
number two, sell it second,
put it everywhere is in your funnels.
Number three, filter new buyers,
number four, pre-pack your content,
and number five drop hooks.
So as I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,
I wanna share with you my online group builder worksheet.
In it, I show you how to name
and create that attractive name.
I show you where to sell it second,
the nine box model,
you can click the link below to grab your copy.
I even give you the outline of the content calendar
so you can pick from different types of content
and drag it over and figure out
what's the cadence, the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
Whatever your schedule will be,
that way you can have it done,
you can hand to somebody on your team
and they can execute it and click the link
to download your copy and make this a reality.
If you like this episode, be sure to like the video,
hit the subscribe button,
smash that subscribe button actually,
and share it with somebody
that you care about you think that it could serve.
As per usual, I wanna challenge you to live a bigger life
and a bigger business.
And I'll see you next Monday.
(upbeat music)