Small Biz Buzz, by Keap

Carla Miner is joined by Greg Jenkins from Monkeypod Marketing helps us answer a listener questions—how to segment your list, and how to keep promotions fresh?  You’ll need to listen to hear to hear the full answers, but you can also find a bunch of ideas on our blog post 26 Best Examples of Sales Promotions to Inspire Your Next Offer.  You can also check out our Cash In a Flash ebook, which walks you through the nitty gritty of managing a flash sale promotion.

How do you know when to hire employees and leaders? And how do you ensure they are invested in your business when you do? Clate and Scott give the answer on today’s episode. How do you know when it’s time to hire another employee? Read “7 Ways You Know It’s Time to Hire Someone” to find out at http://bit.ly/signstohire.

A listener asks if competence or character is more important when running (or hiring new employees for) your business. Clate answers, and Scott refuses to. Listen to find out why. Join Infusionsoft executives at Elite Forum, which helps growing businesses lead their teams to success.

Clate and Scott answer a listener question—when should you consider adding outbound sales, especially when you already have a healthy inbound flow of leads and sales? Get the most out of prospects by refining sales pipeline with “The 7 Sales Pipeline Stages Every Small Business Should Use” at http://bit.ly/salespipelinestages

Today we answer a listener question and bring in our content and email marketing experts to talk about getting and closing leads using educational and promotional webinars. Check out our interactive email copy tool to help you quickly write effective emails, for your webinars or anything else, at infusionsoft.com/drip-now.

Holly DeVito is the CEO and founder of Sum of All Numbers, a bookkeeping company specializing in helping entrepreneurs increase their profits. Her burning question is how to change from a word-of-mouth business to a faster growing, marketing savvy company, all while no longer being the person doing face-to-face sales. Clate and Scott walk her through lead magnet ideas—and some equations befitting the name of her business—while discussing how much money is the right amount to spend to acquire new custom

Chris Prefontaine of Smart Real Estate Coach has a great problem - he’s getting a lot of revenue out of his small list, but he wants to grow his list even more. How can he do that? Clate and Scott to the rescue! They advise Chris to step back and take a look at the fundamentals: Is he crystal clear on his target audience? Do you have goals and reliable ways to track them? Psychographics play a big role.

Gosia chats with Clate and Scott about the tough early years of starting a business, finding a balance with work and family, and how she’s worked through discouragement in tough times.

Lee Egstrom of Passinglane has this question for Clate and Scott: How do I know when to introduce a particular product or technology? It’s about making small bets, making them often, and looking for a 10x return. Listen to this hot seat as Clate and Scott help Lee figure out how to do it and use automation without seeming like Big Brother.

Lee Egstrom of Passinglane has been helping small businesses grow for 20 years. He chats with Clate and Scott about why he only takes clients who have been in business for five years; how he uses modeling to achieve his goals; and the entrepreneurs he looks to for inspiration.

Clate and Scott answer with the three key concepts: preventing surprise with frequent courageous conversations; establishing objective, measurable goals; and highlighting previously success to add context to role changes.

Firefighter Peter Thorpe had seen a lot of devastating fires started by stoves, so he developed FireAvert, which automatically shuts off stoves. Wes Clark, Peter’s  business partner and our guest in this episode, shares with Clate and Scott what it was like to prepare for—and recover from—being on ABC’s Shark Tank, overcoming rejection, and figuring out the simplest way to solve business problems. Oh—and that time he exploded a can of beans all over the fire chief.

Pam chats with Clate and Scott about moving to a subscription model, marketing directly to a consumer instead of through the commodities market, and how automation has enabled her to help pass down the farm to her sons.

Ronan Galvin is the co-founder of Kickstagram, one of this year’s Small Business ICON finalists. Ronan chats with Clate and Scott automation and how it simplifies things, and how he was able to use it to grow his client base without over-scaling his sales team.

Nate Shaw and Peira Moinester are business partners at Brooklyn Music Factory and they want to know, what do they do if they’re not confident that their people are the right people to get them to $3 million in annual revenue? Clate and Scott tackle this question in our very first hot seat.