Ryan Shank documents a chaotic day in NYC mixing vlogging with startup operations: hiring sales reps, closing a customer deal, and protecting $10,000 in gear from rain. He explains the company's 20-30% free-trial-to-paying conversion rate and discusses adding an IVR system to the product.
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What's up guys, we are back. July 1st, 2017. We're gonna go out today. We got a lot of stuff to do. We got Kane here throwing that fire on the edits. We're gonna go out, we're gonna meet up with Michael today, we're gonna meet up with Adam, we're gonna have a fucking sick day, record some stuff in the streets, and get you guys out the vlog. So here we go. Talking to this customer right now, talking to them on live chat. They want international numbers. I'm not really sure where they came from. They want UK numbers, but I told them we can do it, but we have to custom configure their account. They need to be a be a paying customer for us to custom configure their account. Now they said they're going to do a free trial, but they're going to do the free trial with the US numbers, but they haven't signed up for the free trial yet. And it's been about 4 minutes because if we can get them to sign up for the free trial, typically we can get them to convert to a paying customer at around like 20-30%. So that's a really high rate. We also just posted a job listing for new sales reps because we're going to try to get 3 more SDRs, which are sales development reps, to start on Wednesday. But I want them to be US-based. Ideally, we're going to get them to be in New Doubt we're gonna be able to get people to start in New York City by Wednesday. So just got someone that applied. Maria, what's up, Maria? I said you have to be US-based and you're in the Philippines and you applied, but why? Why'd you do that? Why you do that? Why you do that? This dude that I was chatting with on live chat says he's gonna sign up for the free trial. He didn't sign up. Why you playing me, bro? Why you playing me? You said you're gonna sign up, you didn't sign up. I didn't ask you to tell me you were gonna sign up. You told me you were gonna sign up and you don't sign up. I don't get it. Honor your word. If you don't honor your word in live chat, how can we ever trust you? How can we ever trust you if you are live chatting on someone's website and you don't do exactly what you say? We just gotta sign up. We just gotta sign up. Let's go. Woo-hoo-hoo! Naveen coming in hot from a retargeting banner ad. That's what's up. Hello, it's Ryan. Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? Well, that didn't seem to work. This live chat says they're in Bangladesh, but I don't know if that's real or if that is just their IP, but I think it's a— Here we go. Hello, it's Ryan. Hello, bro. Oh, and the guy who just signed up just booked a demo. On the calendar. So we have an email that goes out as soon as they sign up. It's like a welcome— it's like an automated email, but it's sort of like a welcome email that's supposed to look personal. And it includes a link to book an appointment with me on my calendar so that they can set up a demo. So basically, so that we don't have to have humans like call them to set up the demo and everything, and then they can see real-time availability. Anyway, it's awesome when people— one, when they schedule the demo, because that means they're really serious about looking into the product and everything, and we don't have to take resources to actually book it, and it means they read the email, which is like a triple win.
Hi Ryan, can you hear me okay now?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, what's going on? Okay, great.
Well, Ryan, let me tell you that I actually called you because I saw a job posting on Upwork that you're looking for an appointment.
So you're looking to get hired. He clearly doesn't meet the qualifications. I said on the Upwork post that you need to be US-based, you need to have a certain number of verified hours on Upwork, You don't have that. You gotta be in the price range that we're looking for. You don't meet the qualifications, you're gonna call me? Unbelievable, Ben, or what's your, I don't even know the name. You got me all riled up, Ben. Alright, so we're about to go out into the streets. We're about to get some film. We're about to go see what everyone's doing. Make some homeless people freestyle rap us. Give 'em $5. But we also have Michael, Mike Horton. You guys are gonna meet him. He is actually coming over right now. He lives in Brooklyn. Why do you guys all live in Brooklyn, by the way? Uh, I think it's because it's cheaper rent. Cheaper rent, classic. So he's coming over right now. He's gonna be here in around like 15-20 minutes. He is joining the team here full-time, so I'm really pumped to get him on board and just really get him up to speed. We talked about him already. So he'll be over in a little bit, but we're gonna go out, we're gonna just film, we're gonna do some fun stuff in New York. Yo bro, like stop slamming the door. My neighbors get mad and, uh, I think I'm gonna get kicked out of this place. I'm already illegally Airbnb-ing the place when you're not allowed to do that. Alright, so we are about to go to Union Square right now. We're gonna go, we're actually meeting up with my boy Mike from there. We're gonna talk about onboarding, next steps, things we gotta do like that, and then we're gonna do a call. Absolutely, yeah, tell me a little bit about your business. We're gonna basically help you track 70% of what you're doing. Alright, we out here. We out here in Union Square, New York City. We're about to play chess. We're not gonna play chess. Last time I played chess with one of these guys before, by the way, and absolutely destroyed me. I thought I was like talking shit too, 'cause I thought I was gonna win. And they just took me for all my money. And they're so good, they do this all the time. Oh, look at the dogs! My mans right here is chilling, bro. Oh, this girl's spiritual. That's nice. We were filming in Union Square and it started to rain, so we both ran for cover, got the Uber as fast as we could possibly get an Uber, put the cameras, put the vlog gear under the shirts to prevent them from getting destroyed, or else day 2 in the vlog would be over. Vlog on vlog. Usually how I look at this is I'll sort it by last login date. Over their plan, there's like extra usage, right? So this is the thing he's talking about that he had in the middle. So one, he's at least capturing if they go over a certain amount, then it will then at least start accruing a charge for them. Like, why is it slow? Did you see my video? Yeah, yeah. I was like, yo, it's slow as fuck. The old version is way faster. So in one of the designs though, you noticed it was like, hey, you're going over, do you want to upgrade? Very immediate next steps, right? It's like, there's all this stuff in here to clean up before we add the new. I definitely want to add the new stuff like sooner rather than later. When you say new stuff, do you mean like just the new, the new like design or like the new features that you're talking about? Some of the new features. Like I want to add the IVR.
