Getting more accurate customer feedback with Attentive's Brian Long
This week on How to Win: Brian Long, co-founder and CEO of Attentive, an SMS marketing solution. Since being founded in 2016, Attentive had grown to over 1300 employees and recently raised $470M in Series E funding with a total of $866M raised to date. In this episode, we discuss Attentive's vertical focus, obsession with customer feedback, and success with their outbound sales efforts. I share my thoughts on playing in market verticals, adjusting to a rapidly evolving competitive landscape, and how startups should be thinking about their website messaging.
Key Points:
- How Brian got started with Attentive (01:04)
- My thoughts on the advantages of being vertical-specific with a quote from Steve Blank (02:52)
- Brian explains the competitive landscape Attentive was playing in at the start (04:23)
- Why selling should start with identifying the major problems facing your target customers (05:30)
- I discuss how to identify your customer's pain points and use that knowledge to outsell your competitors (06:15)
- Brian shares how Attentive saw early success with their outbound sales efforts (07:21)
- My thoughts on staying relevant to your customers (10:39)
- How Attentive is approaching a competitive landscape that is changing faster than ever before (13:49)
- I explain the importance of keeping up with an ever-evolving competitive landscape with a quote from LinkedIn's Jeff Weiner (15:04)
- Brian explains his strategy for getting accurate customer feedback (19:10)
- I unpack why customer feedback is so important in the era of saturated markets with a quote from Databox's Peter Caputa (22:51)
- Brian describes Attentive's website messaging strategy, and where he thinks others go wrong (24:53)
- My advice on choosing your website messaging strategy, and why you should test your messaging (26:14)
- Brian's advice for other founders and CEOs (27:25)
- Wrap up (28:56)
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