The Push Jack Ferguson

Getting a company off the ground is tough. There's no two ways about it. So, what should you do when sales aren’t happening?

This episode looks at a challenging scenario for a startup company. 

CEO Jordan Lee is struggling to move the company forward and increase the effectiveness of his startups sales and marketing activities while his board continues to apply pressure.

The company has 10 users who aren’t paying…….they haven’t converted a single customer yet.

Furthermore, the 4 employees including a developer, salesperson, marketer, and AI specialist all have unique complaints about the company’s situation.

So what should Jordan do? How can he get the company moving forward?

In this episode we cover:

- The challenges with having free users and what to do when you are under board pressure to make sales

- Why founders need to be political campaigners

- The challenges of partnerships and why they aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be

- Discussing whether using Facebook ads to sell B2B services or products is effective

- What you should do to get more customers coming in the door early

- Some innovative things you can do as a new company to get attention and build community

Shownotes:

1:20 What is Writrrr and what are their problems?

9:15 What should this company do to get some customers?

18:15 How can you get affiliates or partners on board for a startup

20:55 Should this company be targeting a specific vertical or should be varying their targeting further?
26:45 Would Facebook advertising be appropriate for this company?

This episode was co-hosted by Jack Ferguson and Alex Urquhart

Find Jack on LinkedIn here: Jack Ferguson: Overview | LinkedIn

Find Alex on LinkedIn here: Alex Urquhart | LinkedIn

Find The Push on LinkedIn here: The Push: Overview | LinkedIn

Visit The Push website here: Marketing scenarios. Relatable problems. Practical solutions. | The Push Podcast (bethepush.com)

Visit Jack’s personal website here: Small Business Consultant Brisbane - Jack Ferguson

Visit Alex’s website here: Home | Market Science (market-science.co)

In a B2B company, is good 'branding' sufficient to acquire leads and grow a business? Commonly, marketers will claim it does. Sales teams tend to be skeptical.

So, who is right? What exactly is brand or 'branding?' And how can a company navigate the challenges surrounding these discussions?

This episode is for you if:

- You are a CEO or GM of a mid-sized B2B company
- A salesperson frustrated with your marketing teams branding claims
- A marketer frustrated with the lack of understanding sales has about brand
or
- Someone generally curious about the science of brand.

We are going to explore specific branding challenges through B2B development company AppCrafter Studios.

What should CEO Sarah do when the marketing team claim that good branding is enough, yet the sales team are up in arms about it?

Some of the specifics this episode will cover include:

- How you can measure brand

- What branding is

- What is brand salience and why it’s important

- The brand spectrum of sophistication

- Whether the marketing team should be talking to customers or not

- Why sales and marketing rarely work well together

And

- Whether the marketing team are right when they say that good branding will result in leads just happening

To discuss, Marketing and Sales Consultant Jack Ferguson is joined by Growth and Product Marketing Specialist Alex Urquhart.

Find Jack Ferguson on:

LinkedIn: Jack Ferguson | LinkedIn

Website:  Small Business Consultant Brisbane - Jack Ferguson

Find Alex Urquhart on:

LinkedIn: Alex Urquhart | LinkedIn
 
Website: Home | Market Science (market-science.co)

Find The Push on:

LinkedIn: The Push: Overview | LinkedIn

Website: Marketing scenarios. Relatable problems. Practical solutions. | The Push Podcast (bethepush.com)

Today we have a deviation from the usual interview style episode. 

This will be a short solo episode. 

We are going to discuss how Jack got his first customer for an old business.

So many people have been in this situation; whether they are struggling to get new customers, or have never had a customer in the first place. 

Sometimes listening to the way someone else thought through a problem can help. That's what this episode is for. 

We discuss the problem, some of the roadblocks that came up while trying to solve it, and some things for you to think about if you are facing a situation like this. 

This episode was hosted by Jack Ferguson. 

“You can have success but not really know why, whereas if things are not going well it’s often clear what is wrong”

Today we are fortunate to have a previous guest return for Round 2. 
Toby Jenkins, former Olympian, business owner, and all-round great guy is back.

Toby and our host Jack caught up recently. It became clear very quickly that they were in similar situations. Having both gone through big challenges in their businesses, and not really knowing what the next step is, making an episode about this challenge just made sense.
Usually, you see stories of overcoming hardship floating around on social media. But these stories are often told when there is a happy ending. For Toby and Jack, the happy ending for the current chapter hasn't arrived just yet. So if nobody else will talk about their situation when things are going poorly, why shouldn’t The Push give it a go?
We speak about:
DecouplingWhat has been waking Toby up in the middle of the night.  What recently happened to Jack that has him in a tailspin. Choosing to hit publish on vulnerable content (like this episode). Trying not to mentally fast forward through crappy times.And how to do the work of defining our values and using them as our North Star.A big thank you to Toby for being so open on this episode, it’s not easy to talk about difficult subjects publicly. 
This episode was hosted by Jack Ferguson

Today we are talking to Cameo Ashe, Founder of Lemonade Beach. A business with a funky name, Lemonade Beach is actually an Accounting Firm. 

We discuss the reasons why Cameo chose that name during the episode.

We cover a range of topics throughout this episode including:
How music is similar to sports in terms of how you learn teamwork. How doing business with family can prove to be problematic.Why she doesn’t like to work from home, and the advantage she sees in having an office. First hires and how Cameo has gone about building her team, including challenges she had with outsourcing prior to bringing on internal team members.How she works with people she likes and doesn’t tend to bother when she doesn’t see a fit. How she has become cynical of people who try to look wealthy and accomplished on Social Media. As an Accountant Cameo sees the real story behind someone’s finances, and this part of the discussion was quite eye-opening.Why some Accounting Firms carry client debt but advise their clients not to do that.And
The problems you will run into if you don’t do a cashflow forecast.A great episode to start off 2022!

Today's inbetweenisode details what it's like for your business to be on the bottom of a Social Media Pile On. 

This podcast episode may feature more short episodes like this if they are popular so please make it known on the Instagram page @bethepush if you enjoyed this.

This story discusses:

- How such a pile on can come to be (you don't have to do anything extreme to trigger it).

- What it's like to experience it.

- What lessons were learned after being on the bottom of a pile on.

The Push host Jack Ferguson shares this story from his own life.