There have been examples of companies that grew without a sales team. Dropbox in the beginning was growing via network effect and their gimmick of get more free space by referring a friend. Boom! That gimmick was a Growth Hack tactic. Then sales had to come in and start upselling the freebies to paid accounts.

Slack has had incredible growth in just two years – 2 million daily users and it will be 3 million before year 3 is up. How did they grow? Well, the CEO explains that here. In short, he says if you make an incredible product, you won’t need sales. Word of mouth will be all you need.

Unfortunately not enough thinking and, later on, improvement goes into product design. The improvement is just features or playing catch-up to the marketplace. More companies should leverage the Lean feedback cycle.

“If the company had an amazing product, and an amazing brand, they wouldn’t need to be hiring for that sales role in the first place.” (or so the story goes. Still need some marketing.)

“We do know that during the first several years, Slack didn’t have an outbound sales team, nor did they have an elaborate marketing operation. So cold-calling and lead generation/lead nurturing campaigns, the staples of many high-growth SaaS operations, weren’t levers they were pulling. And yet, Slack was able to go from 0 to nearly $4 billion in less than four years.” Read the article.

I have said many times, if the Customer Experience (CX or UX) was improved – the deployment, the install, the follow up – much like Zappos and Mindspring – you could grow with less salespeople, and do it with just a little marketing*. (*Although marketing IS improving the CX.)

Look at Google Fiber: Google focused on pretty (office, packaging) and unique (Gigabit Fiberhood) and different (CPE and No Voice originally), and the hype went through the roof. It only resulted in less than 150K subscribers*! I detailed much of that in Marketing Your Fiber (you can get the slides and mp3 here).

* Much like Covad and the other DLECs who didn’t comprehend how the ILECs would make it hard on you; Google didn’t fathom how hard regulations, status quo, power companies, the Duopoly and fiber construction would be. Huge hurdles to overcome – again and again.

ASIDE:
20 Slack Apps You’ll Love (integrations with Slack) by ProductHunt.

A book written by PWC about Strategy produced 2 videos with examples.

“Success comes from making a promise about the value you’re going to create, and then focusing everything you have on delivering that promise. It’s about what you do, not what you sell.” That is branding, marketing, innovation and positioning all rolled into one strategy.

1. Building a strategy to stand out
2. Five Acts to Transform Your Future

“2016 Internet Trends” report from Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers general partner Mary Meeker is 213 slides long. [A pdf of the slides here.]

Highlights of the trends at Geekwire HERE.

Mary Meeker’s 24 minute keynote is a nice summary of the trends.

More highlights.

Why images on social media is so important: “There are now over 3 billion images shared daily between Snapchat, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp—all but one of which are owned by Facebook. 55% of Pinterest users use the site to find products they want to buy.”

Kerri Pottharst is Australia’s most decorated Indoor and Beach Volleyball player. She won bronze and gold in beach volleyball Olympics. Her interview offers insights businesses can take to heart as well.

“Everyone remembers you winning the gold, but no one sees the 18 years prior to that. There were highs and there were lows, there were times I didn’t believe in myself but I always, always pushed through. I just had it in me. I wanted to see how good I could be. I wanted to be the best.”

Remember that there are highs and lows. The high moments – yes, they are but moments – are there for your to hold onto to get you through the low times. There always seems to be more lows than highs. Hang in there!

“Indoor and Beach Volleyball have taught me that it takes passion, preparation and belief to be successful in anything. The passion will get you up in morning and do the things you may not always enjoy, the preparation is all the hard work and you need to develop the belief in
yourself to achieve success.”

Plan … everything… no winging it … including the press and the marketing. Need help? See here.

Hope you all have a safe Memorial Day Weekend.   Take a moment to remember that Monday isn’t picnic, beer and burger day. It is a somber reminder of what freedom costs.

UCaaS

• How Workers Really Feel About Video Conferences (Infographic)
• Osterman Survey: Most Businesses See Value of #Skype4B but Fear Change
• Cloud Computing infographic from CDW
• Tidbits for MSPs 

Big Data

If you like Big Data: Google releases free version of Data Studio custom reporting product, which integrates with AdWords, Analytics, YouTube and other data sources.

Scoble mentioned Looker. “Looker makes it easy for data teams to create a data platform that everyone in your organization can explore and rely on. The result? A true data culture where everyone understands what’s working and decisions can be made faster and with confidence.”

Marketing

12 Bite-Sized Marketing Tips for Telecom Agents but really for any service business.

Social Media Engagement Trends You Shouldn’t Miss [Infographic]

Marketing Workshop – work with me to walk step by step through your marketing – from value proposition, to marketing plan to getting your email going again – in 4 weeks in June. Register Here Now!