- Nearly every week I run
into someone in my sphere, in my space.
I was like, oh, I used to use ToutApp.
ToutApp was my last company.
We pioneered the sales engagement space.
And I always thought it was a little weird
that I run into so many people so often.
And then I did the math.
It turned out ToutApp amassed nearly 100,000 salespeople
using the product.
So it's not coincidence that I constantly run into people
where they're like, "Oh, I used to use that product.
I loved it."
So here's a big question though.
How did I actually amass 100,000 users?
And this wasn't just random people
using some random product.
This was salespeople who were very specific and targeted.
So in this episode, I'm gonna walk you through
the exact growth-hacking strategy
the exact go-to-market machine I built at ToutApp
to amass 100,000 users.
I'm gonna distill it down to three
concrete, specific principles that you can adopt.
And when you follow these principles,
you're gonna be able to know exactly
how you can apply it to your SaaS business
to accelerate your path to that next stage of growth.
And by the way, if you're thinking, "Well, that was ToutApp
does it still work?"
But guess what?
These are the same exact principles I use
for my company Unstoppable today.
And now we are at 46,000 subscribers in this channel
and over 250 SaaS founders we work with
directly as customers.
So they still work and they're timeless.
Intro.
(upbeat music)
What's up everybody?
Welcome to Unstoppable.
I'm TK, and on this channel I help SaaS founders like you
grow your SaaS business faster with an Unstoppable strategy.
Now if you're new to this channel,
welcome, I drop an episode every single Sunday
with actionable strategies and tactics from the trenches
on how to grow your SaaS business faster.
So be sure to hit that Subscribe button and that Bell icon.
That way you'll get notified every single time
I drop an episode with the TK Energy.
Now, if you're already part of this community
this fast-growing community of 46,000 subscribers
and SaaS founders
if you're part of my SaaS go-to-market coaching programs
my people, welcome back.
It's really awesome to see you over here.
My last company ToutApp pioneered the sales engagement space
and we amassed nearly 100,000 users.
My current company Unstoppable,
we are now at 46,000 subscribers on this channel
and we have over 250 customers in our go-to-market programs.
This be is a question
how did I do it and how did I do it again?
But it turns out it's nothing crazy.
The principles that I use to build these kinda companies,
the principles that I teach inside
of my SaaS go-to-market coaching program.
Principles I talk about in this channel,
they're all timeless, they're all the same core principles.
So in this episode, I'm gonna walk you through
the three specific principles I applied
to amass 100,000 users for ToutApp.
If you're excited to dig in, go and smash out Like button
for the YouTube algorithm and let's dig right into it.
Principle number 1 with ToutApp.
Well now for context, for those of you that don't know,
ToutApp was a solution and a SaaS platform
where it helps salespeople generate more pipeline,
be more productive, track their emails, use templates,
all those things.
And we were one of the first in the market.
That specific set of features
when we first, first started out
could have been used by anyone.
What I recognized was it could have been used by anyone
that uses email, could have been PR people,
BizDev people, HR people.
But we decided to follow principle number 1,
and we said, "Nope, we're gonna focus on salespeople
and specifically we're gonna focus on
inside salespeople and SDR Reps.
That was our ideal customer profile.
We didn't start off like that originally
but as soon as we did,
that was one of the first critical points
of our go-to-market machine
and this giant growth tech that we ran
to a mass 100,000 users that really kicked things into gear.
So principle number 1 for you
as you are building out your go-to-market strategy
as you're looking to drive growth
for your SaaS business and amass 100,000 users
is that get specific on exactly who you wanna be targeting
that needs your product the most.
Once you have that in place
a lot of other things come together.
That's when principle number 2 came in for me,
especially with ToutApp.
People didn't quite know what our tool did.
Salespeople just used CRM and that was it.
Marketers used email marketing automation,
but that was very different than what we were building.
And anytime we approach salespeople and said,
"Hey, we help you be more productive,
we help you send emails,
we help you track them, we help you use templates."
They were quick to say, "Wait, hang on, no, no, no
you should go talk to marketing,
they're like the email people, we don't do that."
And we're like, "No, no, no, no, no.
You are sending a lot of emails for sales.
You are prospecting into people
you're following up on leads.
That's all email, that's all phone calls.
We help you streamline that."
We had to educate people about that space.
People didn't quite know how to think about us.
And if you're building a disruptive SaaS offering
then very often you have to actually educate the market.
You could even be building a commodity offering.
You're building yet another CRM,
and in that case you have to educate the market
on why they should go with you versus the gold standard,
which is Salesforce.
So principle number 2, is we built our manifesto.
We built a differentiated message, a narrative,
a core message that was transformational,
that educated salespeople
on why they needed to be using our product.
And we dubbed it under the guide,
how to write kick ass sales emails.
This is what it looked like.
It was pretty awesome and got downloaded
tens of thousands of times and we used that as a core asset
to spread our message and educate salespeople
all over the world on why they should be using our platform
and also just how to be more effective
with the email communications they were doing as salespeople
so they can win more deals,
which is ultimately what they really, really cared about.
So principle number 2 and principle number 1
went hand-in-hand,
because if we hadn't set a proper ideal customer profile
and focus on salespeople, then our message on
how to ride kick ass sales emails
and the manifesto that we use
would never have come together, it would've been diluted.
We probably would've written a manifesto
like how to write emails and who would've used that?
We would've never gotten the traction that we did
to amass 100,000 users
and also paid customers on top of that.
So these two principles were the linchpin for ToutApp
and really getting the growth going.
Once these two things were established
we had our core go-to-market strategy
and that was half the battle.
Then the real thing came together,
we went to principle number 3.
Now, before I go to principle number 3,
let me just pause here for a second.
Are you starting to see the power in this?
If you are a regular viewer of this channel
I talk about ICP and manifesto all the time,
but I wanted to do this episode just to reiterate the fact
of how powerful these are and how timeless they are
and how nuanced they are, picking the right ICP.
When I work with founders inside of my go-to-market program
we look at 29 different points
on how to really nail in on the right ICP.
Note, our ICP wasn't just salespeople
it was salespeople that were inside salespeople and SDRs
and that happened to be in a particular type of company
and that's why we were able to grow so fast.
But also on top of that, how you communicate to these people
to really position your product
so that they're more likely to use it
you can educate them and you stand out in the market
and you are differentiated in terms of the competition,
that was the manifesto.
These were all nuanced things that we did
and I talk about in this channel
and I work with founders out in my go-to-market program.
This is nuanced work, but when you do them
they work incredibly well and that's the power in this.
So if you're starting to see the power
in just these two principles
and how powerful they are when you implement them
can I just get a yes in the comments below
and also smash a Like button for the YouTube algorithm?
It just loves it when you do that.
Also, if you are an early stage SaaS founder
and you're like, "Look, I wanna get to 100,000 users
I wanna get to 1,000 customers.
I wanna get to that next stage of growth
and I really need to embrace this founder-led
go-to-market journey.
I really need to align my team.
We really need to nail our ICP and our messaging."
This is exactly why I run
my SaaS go-to-market coaching program.
You don't have to go anywhere right now.
I'll tell you more about it at the end of this episode.
I'll link to it below.
Right now, let's go to principle number 3,
because on top of the ICP and the manifesto
this principle number 3 is the thing that
really brought everything together
and I wanna tell you about it.
Also, smash our Like button
while you're here for the YouTube algorithm.
Just loves you when you do that.
So do we put a lot of love into these videos?
Okay, principle number 3 was we ran a Broadway show,
but every Broadway show is slightly different.
When I work with founders
like there's a concept of a Broadway show.
The concept of a Broadway show
which is the principle that I talk about in this channel
is you wanna run a consistent set of sales
and marketing activities on key channels
to bring your manifesto to your ICP.
And that's a Broadway show instead of being all random.
But the different strategies that go into Broadway shows
and it's nuanced, it depends on the company
and that's when I work with founders and I coach them.
We talked through exactly what the right strategy was
specifically for ToutApp, principle number 3 here
was we followed the host parasite strategy.
What we said was, look, we wanna target salespeople.
Let's find out exactly
who is already selling to salespeople.
Where are these salespeople already hanging out?
And remember, this is early 2010s all the way from 2010,
all the way to 2017 was the ToutApp journey.
At that time, you had to target salespeople
to get really smart about it.
Now there are all these communities
of salespeople that are online,
but that didn't exist back then.
It was mostly offline, but we had to figure out
how to really hack into these.
So what we found, and this seems obvious,
but it wasn't obvious as we were navigating,
it was who else sells to salespeople?
It was CRM companies.
And we looked at Salesforce, we looked at HubSpot.
HubSpot was just now starting to get into the CRM space.
Back then it was just purely marketing automation.
And we're like, look, there's Salesforce, there's Oracle,
maybe there's HubSpot, but really Salesforce is king.
So we started to follow what we call
the host parasite strategy.
We said was Let's integrate with Salesforce.
We actually used their APIs to integrate into them.
Then we said, let's actually figure out
what marketplaces they have.
Salesforce happen to have the Salesforce app exchange.
So we listed ToutApp over there.
Then we said, what events do they have?
Well, they had Dreamforce
and they had all these smaller events.
So we started going to those events
and we didn't just stick to Salesforce.
We also said, well, where else are salespeople
searching for tools and looking for things?
And we found that there was one more marketplace
that was a Google Chrome store.
So we went and listed ToutApp in over there
and we started to actually be a parasite to this host.
Salesforce and Google were already targeting all these users
that we wanted to go after.
We basically became a parasite in them
and started to provide value and started to participate
in their ecosystem.
What that allowed us to do was get in front
of our ideal customers and then get our product
and our manifesto right in front of them.
And that allowed us to really accelerate the growth.
If we had to just purely spend money on advertising
or we just purely had to spend money on cold calling
and cold emailing, we would've never scaled so quickly,
because we found a host that was already selling
to our ideal customers
and we brought our differentiated message
through the marketplaces, the events,
and then on top of that with the ads
we were able to run a Broadway show that was leveraged
and that was the host parasite strategy that we followed.
Now, should every company use a host parasite strategy?
No, it really depends.
And this is why we actually talk through what is the ICP,
what is the manifesto, what is the differentiating message
and what is the right strategy for the Broadway show?
It's nuanced, but the principles are true.
And with those three things in play, the ICP, the manifesto
and then that host parasite Broadway show
we created this custom go-to-market machine
that amassed us 100,000 users.
And it was really beautiful when you think about it.
The way it worked was we would go
into the host at all different hook points,
we would constantly introduce our differentiated message
and we either got them into a free trial of our product
which converted to paid at 7% on a regular basis
or we got them into our manifesto
which then got them into the free trial of the product
or we got them into the free trial of the product
and then we overlaid it with the manifesto.
So it was a two-pronged strategy
to really educate these salespeople
and get a mass movement going of using ToutApp.
There's so many other nuances that we did
further into the product,
further into the go-to-market strategy
that's beyond the scope of this video.
But these three principles helped us
really get the leverage we needed as a tiny company
to amass 100,000 salespeople using our product.
And no wonder I keep running into people all the time.
They're like, "Oh, I used to use ToutApp."
And I'm like, "That's weird."
And then I'm like, "Well, the math checks out."
There's so many people that downloaded it and used it.
No wonder I meet them so often.
So to recap principle number 1, for this growth strategy
that I used to amass 100,000 users.
We flashed out our ideal customer profile
and got very specific about exactly who we were targeting.
Principle number 2, we crafted a manifesto
with a very differentiated message.
We thought about what were the objections,
we thought about exactly what these people need
and what they care about
and crafted this manifesto that made the world a difference
to actually get their attention and convince them
to get into our product.
And then, we brought that manifesto to our ideal customers
on a consistent basis by running a Broadway show.
And specifically, we followed the host parasite strategy
through different strategies that exist
for running a Broadway show.
Just like how there are 29 different points
we're building an ideal customer profile,
but these were the specific things we use for ToutApp,
because that's what made sense
for it to actually drive that growth.
So now you know exactly how I amassed 100,000 users.
And by the way, these are the same principles
I follow here for Unstoppable, my current company today,
which now we're at about at the time of this filming,
we're roughly at around 46,000 subscribers
and over 250 customers.
The principles don't change,
but the way you apply them specifically for your product
and for your target market and the messaging
those are the things that are
the really fun parts to figure out.
And when you do, incredible things happen.
And that's why I'm such a big believer
in actually fleshing out your go-to-market strategy
using these three core principles that now you know.
What you may not know is TK
I need to build these pieces out,
but how do I actually build out my ideal customer profile?
How do I know if it's specific enough or detailed enough,
or am I slicing it in the right way,
or am I leaving too much money on the table?
How do you know what your manifesto should be?
How do you craft the manifesto and how do you structure it?
What do you title it?
How do you know exactly what strategy to follow
for your Broadway show?
If you're at this stage where you're looking to figure out
your scalable go-to market strategy,
you're looking to align your team on how to drive growth.
This is exactly why I run
my SaaS go-to-market coaching program.
Inside of this program, we follow three key things.
Number 1, we flesh out your ICP,
number 2, we build out your manifesto,
and then we teach you how to run a Broadway show
using the right strategy to bring your manifesto to your ICP
on a consistent basis.
It's an incredible program.
We've shared so many success stories
of founders and SaaS companies
that have gone through this program right on this channel
and we have more founders joining,
and I'm working with you directly one-on-one
to make sure that you're set up for success
as you figure out these core components.
So if you wanna learn more
on how to work together to actually build out
your go-to-market strategy and apply these principles
and operate the nuances on how to build your machine
and encourage you to go to tkkader.com/gtm,
tkkader.com/gtm.
On that page, you'll get all the details about the program.
And then if it looks like it's a fit,
just go ahead and fill out the little form
and we'll get on a call.
On the call, we'll figure out exactly where you are,
what your goals are in your business
and if we're a fit for working together.
The better the fit, the better the results,
which is why we have this call.
If it sounds like you're the right fit,
then we'll give you all the information
and then we'll be off to the races
and you and I start working together
inside of the go-to-market program.
So just go to tkkader.com/gtm and also link to it below.
Also, if you got value from this video
please smash that Like button for the YouTube algorithm,
it just loves it when you do that.
And so do we, we put a lot of love into these videos.
I truly do these videos and my team works really hard
to develop these videos and edit these videos
and plan for these videos and promote these videos
so that we can help as many SaaS founders as possible.
It's also, if you have a fellow SaaS founder
or team member part of a Slack group or WhatsApp group,
a group of people that will get value from this video
and this channel, please share this with them,
it'll just mean the world to us as well.
I drop an episode every Sunday
with actionable strategies and tech.
So from the trenches from actually having done it
and still doing it, being in the trenches just like you.
So be sure to hit the Subscribe button and that Bell icon.
And lastly, remember, everyone needs a strategy
for their life and their business.
When you are with us, yours is gonna be Unstoppable.
I'm TK and I'll see you in the next episode
or inside the SaaS go-to-market coaching program.
Take care everybody.
(upbeat music)
So if you're excited to begin, wait, hang on.
This is the beginning, isn't it?
So let's go to intro.