B2B sales pushed for mid-Dec, AI SaaS products, Schramko interview

Happy Wednesday to 6,748 readers of the Growth Blueprint newsletter (or at least the 52.64% who open the weekly bulletins on average).

If you’re new here, this weekly newsletter combines:

• Go-to-market strategies that work today for B2Bs

• Industry and market trends in bull and bear markets (especially nearing the bottom)

• Effective ways to revamp what isn’t working and packaging it the right way

• Positioning, networking, building relationships and audiences

• Insights from my businesses + their portfolio accounts (aggregated know-how)

• Market data to calibrate around what I see

So here’s what stands out this week.

Slower Q4 for B2B sales

Historically speaking, Q4 is the big shopping season not just for e-commerce, but closing B2B deals across the board.

Annual budgets nearing expiration, preparing 2025 roadmaps, some job hops after the summer slowdown - you name it.

BUT:

Election years tend to be slower, too. And we’re about to face the clash of titans next week.

Combine this with an economic slowdown and sales take a slower turn as well.

So - across the service portfolio, we’ve closed a third of the open warm opportunities.

However, just yesterday, three of our high ticket opportunity leads ($50M - $120M accounts) pushed back until mid to late December.

We’ve got a few more following the same trend during the last week of October, and now I have Dec 20 and Jan 6 meetings confirmed.

So while juggling too many opportunities is usually risky and we pick the priority accounts, the next month will largely be a continuation of October:

1. Doubling down on e-commerce accounts we do landing pages, PPC, platform scalability, and custom tooling for

2. Expanding quarterly budgets for our B2Bs in need of last minute additions

3. Building new tooling for internal services and funnels

4. Recalibrating campaigns for post-Black Friday to maximize pre-Christmas and early January low CPCs

👉 If you want to dive into strategic insights before we’re swamped, check out the advisory program or dive into EaaS with DevriX.

AI SaaS products

If you missed the past edition by chance, I ran a deeper dive of our new AI toolkit and productized services on the DevriX side.

In the meantime, I’ve been working on some lead magnets and standalone products for Growth Shuttle and some of my Robust Branding network platforms, too.

Here’s the Price Strategist:

This is one of the three tools we’re launching until Nov 15 with persistent memory, pretrained models, and GPT insights on competitive pricing plans for both B2B and B2C.

This portfolio of apps will be used as a:

• Self-served bridge based on my own content, insights, and data as a freemium/low ticket consulting form and building a community without going through a long and tedious process

• Niche, specific, tailored set of tools solving specific problems (niching down beyond generalized solutions)

• Separate suite within my broader advisory program ($30K - $70K/year) that incorporates fractional CXO services with competitive dashboards, business executive tools, playbooks, and templates

We’re also using the same playbook for building similar SaaS for clients at $4K a piece - as standalone membership or audience building tools (beating raw content marketing or ebook freebies).

I’m also building some standalone lead magnets for my content sites - including my top articles:

As a final step, we utilize Fasty AI within Growth Shuttle to build similar tools internally for faster prompt generation, training them on my book and blog, and different data sets based on reports and market research.

That’s the internal tooling that’s staff + invite-only (160+ tools).

All in all, the bot domination is going strong. Conversion rates are higher, organic submissions are going up, and this also brought in new newsletter subscribers (hi if you came from these) and social followers.

We’re at this point in time that everyone knows about AI and uses ChatGPT.

A handful of people use a handful of other tools.

But putting them to good use is still a gap - and we’re bridging this internally + providing additional tooling and magnets for our portfolio of clients.

The global macro interview with James

My podcast with James Schramko is live on the B2B Growth Hacking Playbook channel.

As a business advisor myself, I put my money where my mouth is.

• Top athletes work with coaches

• Great actors direct movies

• Dentists go to other dentists, too

The only way I can continue to improve both as a serial entrepreneur and a business advisor is working with incredible people who serve as thought partners, niche consultants, and practical leaders.

James makes 7 figures with coaching and a pretty lean team (5 people) and sold his dev and marketing agencies many years ago. He’s a pretty sharp and balanced leader who effectively moved down from working 70 hours a week to 50, then 40, then 25, now 15 hours or so on the business.

He also runs a surfing channel - that’s to serve as an aspiration in the coming few years!

James and I often do deep dives on the global economy together, me being based in Europe, he’s in Australia, and most of my accounts are across North America.

We also run competitive sprints with different prompts and tools and automate processes like crazy. He’s truly successful in running revenue-sharing deals (that I normally structure as angel investments with a dividend structure later).

Sign up for the channel to get the new episode in your feed. It’s worth it.

That’s all for today - November is right around the corner with elections and the upcoming Black Friday weekend. Buckle up and make the most out of Q4.

And if you’re struggling right now between multiple competing priorities in mind, hit Reply and let me toss a coin for you.

Yours,

Mario

✍️ The State of SaaS in 2024: $80B Insights Report- This video dives into insights from Iconic's go-to-market study, highlighting trends you need to watch out for. With data from over 150 top players, you’ll discover key shifts - like why smaller SaaS companies are seeing explosive growth, how sales motions are evolving, and what metrics are defining success in this economy. From emerging sales strategies to the impact of economic challenges, we’re unpacking real numbers, trends, and what they mean for SaaS companies in today’s landscape.

✍️ DevriX’s Webinar on November 7th- I'm getting blasted by CEOs, founders, executives, and directors multiple times a day regarding the future of B2B. Consolidating this know-how and recurring questions into a new webinar! Join me and the DevriX team on November 7th, 9 AM PT for a breakdown of the key factors stressing the B2B economy in 2023-2024 and more!

✍️ Top Tier Business Coaching, HoldCos, AI Augmentation, Rev Share Deals
w/ James Schramko (#10) - Join business legend James Schramko as he pulls back the curtain on his remarkable journey - from managing Mercedes-Benz dealerships to becoming a top-rated coach for high-impact entrepreneurs. Get an insider's view of Schramko's unique success blueprint, including his "Three Tool Rules" for essential business efficiency and why timing is critical in every growth decision.

📧 Visual Capitalist - Visual Capitalist is one of the fastest growing publishers globally, focused on topics including markets, technology, energy, and the global economy. Sign up here!

📧 WPTavern - is the broader Town Square newsletter for the masses. I recommend it to people outside of the community, too. WP Tavern is a warm and inviting community where those interested in the software can hang out with fellow WordPressers to engage in enlightening discussions. Sign up here!

📃 Grok’s new Update. Following the release of Grok 2 in August, which introduced image generation capabilities to the AI chatbot, Musk-owned xAI has released another update, which has given the chatbot the ability to understand and interpret images and answer questions about them. Musk even claims it can understand humor, so could potentially even interpret funny memes and GIFs.

📃 AI Overview for 100 more countries. Starting this week, AI Overviews will begin rolling out in more than 100 countries and territories around the world. With this latest expansion, AI Overviews will have more than 1 billion global users every month. Waiting eagerly for the update to hit countries like Bulgaria as well.

📃 75% of OpenAI’s revenue comes from paying customers. OpenAI generates the vast majority of its revenue from consumers who pay for its products, Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar said, even as the artificial intelligence startup competes in a crowded market to sign up more corporate customers. In an interview with Bloomberg TV on Monday, Friar said that roughly 75% of OpenAI’s business comes from consumer subscriptions. The company’s paid consumer plan for its chatbot ChatGPT currently starts at $20 per month.

📃 Major breakthrough in the hearing aid business. More than 48 million Americans hear so poorly that their quality of life significantly suffers as a result. The problem: Most wait too long to act, hoping their hearing will improve on its own. Sadly, it never does. But now, a game-changing device is revolutionizing the hearing aid industry, and experts say it's the biggest breakthrough they've seen in over a decade - the Horizon IX hearing aid.

📃 Volkswagen planning mass layoffs and plant closures. The company's works council head said that Volkswagen plans to shut at least three factories in Germany, lay off tens of thousands of staff, and shrink its remaining plants in Europe's biggest economy as it plots a deeper-than-expected overhaul. Volkswagen reiterated on Monday that restructuring was needed and said it would make concrete proposals on Wednesday.

📈 S stocks climbed on Monday to kick off a pivotal week packed with Big Tech earnings, an inflation update, and a crucial monthly jobs report.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite jumped nearly 0.3%, while the S&P 500 rose by the same amount. The Dow Jones Industrial Average increased more than 250 points, or nearly 0.7%, leading to gains.

• S&P 500: $5,832(+0.16%)

📈 Average mortgage rates rose for all types of loans compared to a week ago, according to Bankrate data. Rates for 30-year fixed, 15-year fixed, 5/1 ARMs and jumbo loans increased.

• 30-year mortgage rate: 6.86%(+0.22)

• 15-year mortgage rate: 6.17%(+0.18)

📈 The nine days until Federal Reserve officials sit down to decide what to do next with interest rates features a veritable murderers' row of events to shape their move - everything from key employment and inflation data to a closely fought U.S. presidential election.

📰 Here are some of the most prominent headlines this week:

• Israel bans UNRWA, the main humanitarian aid agency operating in Gaza.

• Lebanon's Hezbollah names Naim Qassem as Secretary General to succeed Hassan Nasrallah who was killed in an Israeli airstrike last month

• Philadelphia's district attorney sues Elon Musk and his pro-Trump super PAC over controversial $1 million giveaway to registered voters

📈 SeedBlink Secondary Market surpasses €3,7M in transaction volume - As we look back on SeedBlink's secondary market performance in 2024, it’s clear that the platform is entering an important phase of growth. Let’s see some of the offers this week":

• InstaSun - redefines the beach experience with a revolutionary 360° solar protection device.

• Klarna - Klarna, a global fintech leader, has evolved beyond "buy now, pay later," serving 150M users across 45 countries with over 500,000 retail partners.

• Brainactive - Access +300 million consumers globally, gain key insights and optimise your decisions with a user-friendly AI-enhanced survey builder.

Note: Got a round going that you want to feature - your own business or a portfolio company? Get in touch.

Let’s see the latest offers from Flippa. Don’t forget to sign up to their newsletter for daily/weekly/monthly offers such as these.

Web Hosting & Design Service - This service-based business providing hosting and on-demand web design and marketing services has driven a TTM revenue of $385.8K.

• Monthly profit: $18,656

• MRR: $20,628

• Business age: 5 years

Fast Growth ChatGPT Prompt Tool - This SaaS business which enables users to improve generative AI prompts has quickly grown to 2.3M+ users.

• Monthly profit: $163,284

• ARR: $4,195,741

• Compound annual growth rate: 31.4%

Movie Recap YouTube - This YouTube channel featuring movie summaries has driven 37.2M 28-day views.

• Monthly profit: $13,249

• Active subscribers: 6,976,000

• Business age: 4 years

Need My Help?

I'm involved with a number of initiatives - here's what I can do to help you:

🌐 Scalable and secure WordPress? DevriX provides WordPress retainers to SMEs, publishers, eCommerce, SaaS, and more. Our plans start from $1,200/mo to $40K/mo for anything from support through engineering, CRO, performance, security, to fractional CXO services and managing the data stacks of large corps.

🚀  Want to scale and optimize your business? Growth Shuttle offers personalized advisory plans starting at $600/hr. Tap into my personal pool of business know-how and my data warehouse of industry data.

👥 Want access to my blueprints/books and a weekly Slack planning session? Join my Community and grab my Entrepreneurship book. 

📈 Looking to start a US company? Check out doola and their “Business in a Box” model. Suitable for both foreigners and US citizens and both for residents and non-residents.

📊 Have you tried buying and selling digital property? Have a look at Flippa’s marketplace. They offer a vast variety of online businesses for any buyer’s interest. Or if you’re ready for an exit, Flippa provides you with the necessary tools to list your business and close the deal.

💼 Looking for investment opportunities? Check out SeedBlink and use Equity to manage your equity.

💡 Eager to incorporate my recommended solutions? Track my angel investments. Sharing, applying for open roles, or writing reviews helps a ton.  And anything else I try to publish on my blog and my courses here!