Presented by

Ian SmithPowered by

My name is Ian Smith

• I work for QuoteWizard• And I want to talk to you about the anatomy

of a successful lead gen company

Dillon, MT

Seattle, WA

Three topics

• How to build great lead gen funnels• How to build great teams• How to innovate at scale

About Ian Smith

Industry Veteran• 8 years of experience• Helped sell over 10,000,000 leads• First employee at QuoteWizard• As VP of Technology: Built our platform• As VP of Operations: Drive continuous

improvement of our business

How to build great lead gen funnels

Step 1: Learn to ride the rapidsStep 2: Test your heart out

Learn to ride the rapids

Learn to ride the rapids

Two hardest things in lead gen:• Getting consumers to start• Getting consumers to share their phone #

Learn to ride the rapids

What can go wrong

• Not debugging• Building defensively• Assuming the visitor knows what to do• Failing to iterate

Test your heart out

• Your funnel can always be better• You need to test• You need to be bold• And be prepared to be surprised

Example

• We challenged our design team to make QuoteWizard look cool

Our old home insurance lander

Our new insurance lander

Which one will work better?

A. B.

Which one will work better?

-26%

Why?

Looking at the heat map for A

Looking at the heat map for B

What can go wrong

• You make assumptions• You trust your assumptions• You fail to test your assumptions

• But testing and empirical decision making isn’t everyone’s strong suit

What can go wrong

• You make assumptions• You trust your assumptions• You fail to test your assumptions

• But testing and empirical decision making isn’t everyone’s strong suit : you’ll need a team

How to build great teams

Step 1: Know who you needStep 2: Hire slowStep 3: Fight crazies

QuoteWizard’s Team

QuoteWizard’s Team

The four people you need

• Data Scientists– To ask: Does this really work?

• Marketers– To ask: What if…?

• Developers– To ask: How?

• Sales People– To ask: Would you like to try?

How to find good people

1. Hire slow2. Ask good questions3. Stress test

Good people are like time machines

Ask good questions

• Start with the job post– What questions do you have about our company?– What relevant experience do you have?– Do you prefer SQL or Excel to solve a problem?

• Multiple in person interviews– Describe a time when you had to deliver bad news.– Describe an interaction with a difficult customer.– Describe a project that was going badly and you

helped turn around.

Stress Test

Potential candidates should be able to demonstrate the required skills:• Sales person: Do a test call• Developer: Write code to solve a problem• Analyst: Derive findings from sample data• Client Services: Answer an email

Get messy : multiple tests, followups, white boardsGive feedback and see how they respond

Fighting crazies

1. Set expectations2. Aggressively check-in3. Serve people

Bad people are like groundhog day

Set expectations

• Verbal is not enough!• Write it down:– Job Description– Key Results Areas– Career Development Goals

Aggressively check-in

• Project and task follow-up• Regular 1 on 1s• Written weekly reports– Why should I be happy you were here this week?– High for the week:– Low for the week:

• Written corrections when something is wrong

Serve people

• Your job as a leader is to serve the people who work for you

• Often the best service you can provide is showing certain people the door

You will never say to yourself : “Man, I fired that person too quickly”

How to innovate at scale

• You got a funnel. You got customers. You got a team.

How to innovate at scale

• You got a funnel. You got customers. You got a team. Now your problems scale exponentially.

• So how do you keep focus and innovate at scale?

How to innovate at scale

• Step 1: Create a funnel for ideas• Step 2: Pick priorities• Step 3: Keep learning

Funnel for Ideas

• Your goal: Make your team compete on execution, not origination

• We use the PreKickoff

PreKickoff Basics

Anyone can have an idea30 minute meeting with 4 or 5 interested parties to ask:• What do you want to do?• What are alternatives?• What are the business objectives?• What metrics will be used to track the project?• What is the simplest test to prove the value of this

idea?• What are likely internal objections to this idea?

Pitch and Pick

1. The PreKickoff is a barrier to entry• 90% of ideas self select out before the PreKickoff

2. 50% of PreKickoffs end with the consensus not to advance a pitch

3. Every 6 weeks the executive team meets for a Pitch and Pick

Pitch and Pick

• 3 Minutes to pitch your idea• 2 Minutes for questions• Runoff voting – CEO votes last• Top 2 to 4 projects advance into the Tech /

Design queue

You keep learning

Resources are limited

• Every project is vetted by multiple groups of stake holders

• Business objectives are clearly established and refined

• The executive team provides clear direction as to priorities

• Every project is an opportunity to learn, refine, and improve the process

In Summary

“Victory in the next war will depend on EXECUTION not PLANS and the execution will depend on some means of making the infantry move under fire.” - General George S Patton

Connect

Email: ismith@quotewizard.com

Cell: 206-406-4874

Twitter: @biastoact

Thank You!