247 - Taking a business from $200K to $1M in 53 minutes

Summary

Podcast Summary: Making It with Jon Davids

Episode 247 – Taking a business from $200K to $1M in 53 minutes
Date: March 3, 2026
Host: Jon Davids
Guest: Craig Rosen (Founder, Interview Focus)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Jon Davids sits down with Craig Rosen, founder of Interview Focus—a company offering AI-powered interview prep software. The conversation is framed as a hands-on strategy session to help Craig scale Interview Focus from its current $200,000 in annual revenue to $1 million, focusing on tightening positioning, pricing, and sales processes. The episode is packed with actionable insights for entrepreneurs seeking to grow B2B SaaS businesses, especially in niche or competitive markets.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Business Overview & Positioning

• Craig’s Product & Customer:

  • Interview Focus offers mock interview software to organizations (career centers, staffing companies, military transition programs) ([01:26]).
  • Pivoted from B2C to B2B after discovering that selling to individual job seekers (often unemployed) was unprofitable ([01:50]-[02:17]).

• Current Revenue Streams:

  • ~75% of current customers come from organic/LinkedIn strategies, 25% from cold outreach ([02:52]).
  • Annual contracts typically in the $3,000–$4,000 range per organization ([03:07]).

• Craig’s Role:

  • Still delivers personal coaching sessions ($250/session), making up ~25% of annual revenue ([05:29]).
  • Long-term goal: $5 million/year revenue with scalable software solution ([04:28], [05:44]).

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2. Focusing the Offer & Target Market

• Too Many Verticals:

  • Craig discussed targeting 20 different market verticals.
  • Jon:

    "Please tell me you don’t actually think about 20 different kinds of customers. What a nightmare. You want to have one customer that you sell to, one single product and one way to get them." ([06:27])

• Narrowing Down:

  • Agreed to focus primarily on college/university career centers (the "Ohio State" type customer) ([09:44], [26:16]).
  • Jon emphasized the importance of finding product-market fit and entrepreneurial fit:

    "The entrepreneur has to be aligned with the goal... it's not about what I want or what I think is best, it's what do you want?" ([08:23])

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3. Understanding the Competition & Positioning for Change

• Entrenched Competitors:

  • Craig cited existing players with outdated but widespread solutions, often with multi-year contracts ([09:44]-[10:21]).
  • Most orgs stick with "good enough" products unless they face clear pain points.

• Counter Positioning:

  • Jon:

    "The only positioning is counter-positioning for a new player. We have to throw stones at the current method and say our method works because it’s different." ([10:27])

  • Acknowledged that “better” alone is not enough; it must feel different and solve critical pain (the “bleeding from the neck” problem, not just “nice to have”) ([17:44], [18:12]).

• Craig’s Unique Selling Points:

  • Comprehensiveness: 10 soft-skill assessments (vs. competitors’ 3-4).
  • Fast, reliable onboarding and performance/outage transparency ([11:18], [12:05], [14:19]).
  • Transparent, client-facing uptime stats; historically 99.6% uptime ([14:49]).

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4. Website and Proof (“Social Proof Sells”):

• Critical Gaps:

  • Website lacks compelling video testimonials, logos, and clear social proof ([23:24], [24:39]).
  • Confusingly displays B2B and B2C options, diluting message ([09:13], [25:55]).

• Key Recommendations:

  • Place university client logos prominently above the fold.
  • Collect and showcase raw, authentic testimonial videos from users.
  • Create a “wall” of testimonial videos and highlight compelling case studies ([24:39]-[25:38], [32:25]).
  • Send this proof to prospects between demo scheduling and meetings to “microwave” them before the call ([34:53], [51:31]).

    "By the time you get onto the meeting, not only would they be familiar with you, they'd know you, 'hey, you're the guy from the video.'" ([34:56])

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5. Pricing Strategy

• Current Pricing Too Low:

  • Charging $300–$400/month, where competitors charge $4k–$40k/year ([19:59]–[21:08]).
  • Clients often perceive low price as a negative signal (the “$49 Four Seasons room” analogy) ([35:38]).

• Jon’s Advice:

  • Raise prices significantly—consider "anchor high, discount early for new customers" approach.
  • Use tiered or time-sensitive pricing to drive urgency and future ARPU ([30:49]).
  • Don't position on being cheapest; instead, emphasize value and outcomes.
  • Replicate the premium pricing found in legal, consulting, and executive coaching sectors ([36:19], [38:09]).

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6. Sales Process & Funnel Optimization

• Current Funnel:

  • Mostly manual LinkedIn/email outreach, slow follow-up, limited lead nurturing.
  • Demos are classic feature walkthroughs; little pre-meeting priming ([31:28]–[32:09]).

• Improvements:

  • Deploy automated email sequences after demo is scheduled—share proof, outcomes, and pre-sell benefits ([32:25], [34:53]).
  • Use a VSL (video sales letter) from the founder to articulate pain points, vision, expertise ([32:25]).
  • Warm prospects up with testimonials, case studies, and outcome-driven narratives.

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7. Sales Call Structure & Objection Handling

• Scripted Calls:

  • Craig opens sales calls with discovery questions on student numbers, current solutions, and pain points ([46:28]-[47:04]).

• Jon’s Framework:

  • Start with, “Why did you take this call now?” to surface pain.
  • Cycle through and elevate prospects’ specific frustrations (“What else?”) ([47:21]-[50:12]).
  • Only pitch to their exact pain, not generic features.

• Jon:

  "You want to elevate the pain... and then come in and pitch your solution based on the problems they've just outlined." ([49:37])

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8. The Executive Coaching Opportunity

• Hybrid Model:

  • Craig enjoys one-on-one coaching and gets superior results—Jon suggests a high-ticket executive placement/coaching tier ($2,000–$10,000+) ([36:19]-[40:18]).

• Craig:

  "I get off on it. I love it. I enjoy helping other people." ([40:28])

• Jon:

  "I think you could have a very similar model where you say, 'We charge $10,000 and I'll give you my cutting-edge Interview Focus software... and the outcome will be you get your dream job.'" ([38:09])

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Actionable Takeaways & Recommendations

Jon’s “Three Moves” for 5X Growth ([51:31])

1. Raise Prices:

   • Ditch the “bargain basement” optics. Move toward premium, value-based pricing—even if gradually via anchor-discount models.

2. Focus on One Avatar:

   • Go all-in on the university career center market. Excise B2C and extra verticals from site and messaging.

3. Proof-Driven Funnel & Primed Meetings:

   • Collect and showcase testimonial/case study videos.
   • Build an automated “priming” sequence between meeting booking and demo—testimonials, VSL, and outcome stories.
   • Optimize the sales script to uncover, elevate, and solve real prospect pain.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the danger of being too cheap:

  "If I tried to sell you a Rolex for $38, you'd say, 'what's wrong with the Rolex?' And that's the problem you encounter when you try to sell something and be the cheapest guy on the block." — Jon Davids ([28:13])

• On founder fit and entrepreneurial alignment:

  "There’s also the entrepreneur here. And so there’s a chance that you actually enjoy doing the in-person coaching and that’s what you really want to do. But you have this software on the side..." — Jon Davids ([06:47])

• On sales process structure:

  “You want to show them the dream outcome... That’s the first thing.” ([34:53])

• On elevating prospect pain:

  "You want them to be in that moment, feeling how frustrating it is using the current product... and you’ve got to get some type of pain." — Jon Davids ([47:21])

• On narrowing focus:

  "The faster you pick one [avatar], the faster you’ll scale." ([26:16])

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Key Timestamps for Major Segments

• [01:09] – Craig introduces Interview Focus, business overview
• [01:50] – Pivot from B2C to B2B (why B2C failed)
• [05:29] – Breakdown of revenue streams; coaching vs platform
• [06:27] – Jon’s warning against 20 avatars/verticals
• [09:44] – Discussion of scaling within the college/university vertical
• [10:27] – Counter-positioning strategy against entrenched competitors
• [14:19] – Digging into reliability/uptime as a differentiator
• [19:59] – Deep dive on current and competitor pricing
• [23:24] – Critique of site—need for testimonial videos/social proof
• [25:55] – Clarity on ideal customer: college career center
• [28:13] – Pricing optics and value perception
• [30:49] – Building urgency and value into pricing ("anchor high, discount early")
• [32:25] – Pre-demo lead nurturing and use of proof/testimonials
• [34:53] – Details on VSL and automated email priming
• [46:28] – Outline of Craig’s current sales script/discovery questions
• [47:21] – How to structure sales calls to surface and pitch to real pain
• [51:31] – Jon’s three-part prescription for 5x business growth

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Conclusion

Jon Davids gives Craig—and all listening founders—a master class in B2B SaaS growth strategy. By focusing sharply on a single customer type, massively increasing pricing confidence, and leveraging the power of proof, Interview Focus has a clear, actionable path from a $200K business to $1M+ in sales, without needing more leads or major pivots. The strategies here are universally actionable for SaaS or service entrepreneurs looking to break out of stagnation and drive rapid, profitable growth.

Transcript

[A]

This is Craig Rosen, the founder of Interview Focus. They sell software that helps job seekers practice for job interviews. Craig's been in business for eight years and today he's at $200,000 in annual revenue. So I'm going to sit down with him and go through the business piece by piece. And at the end, I'll give Craig a clear and very doable path to go from 200,000 to a million dollars in annual sales by changing just three very important things. And if you're a business builder of any kind, there's a lot of strategy that we cover in this session, like how to turn cold leads into burning hot leads who are ready to buy, pricing strategy, and why being too cheap can work against you, simple website hacks and more. My name's John Davids. I'm the founder of influicity where we help businesses sell more stuff to more people. And if you like videos and podcasts like this, let me know in the comments, hit like and subscribe. So I know to keep making more like this. And now here's my strategy session with Craig Rosen. You're listening to Making it with John Davids. Craig, tell me about your business.

[B]

We sell cutting edge AI powered interview prep software to businesses and individual job seekers.

[A]

How long you been doing it for?

[B]

We've been doing this since 2018.

[A]

And who do you sell to? Who's the ideal customer today?

[B]

The ideal customer profile. We looked at 20 different verticals, John, and we narrowed it down to three. So the first one are college and university career centers. The second one is recruiters and staffing companies. And the third is military where we help the transition back to civilian life.

[A]

You're selling to organizations, institutions, schools, that sort of thing?

[B]

Correct. We're primarily B2B. We were B2C. But I learned a lesson. It was too expensive. Did not have the kind of return on investment I was expecting with Google AdWords and other ads that I paid for on social media channels. So we got out of it and transitioned to B2B.

[A]

Too expensive. And you were selling to broke people. When I looked at the pricing, when I was doing my research, you were selling looked like a monthly recurring revenue type service to people who were currently unemployed.

[B]

Correct. It just the numbers didn't work out. It was too expensive on the Google AdWords side and never had the kind of response that I was looking for.

[A]

So you're selling to organizations. Fantastic. And so how are you getting customers today? Do you have any of these organizations actually paying you today?

[B]

Yes, we are revenue generating. We have schools. We have Ohio State for instance, that pays us. It's been a customer for a few years.

[A]

So it's organic. And how many customers are you getting from that organic LinkedIn post type strategy?

[B]

It's about 75%. The other quarter being cold emails that we're getting through doing our ideal customer profile on LinkedIn.

[A]

So what is the monthly cost for the Ohio State type client? What, what are they paying you?

[B]

It's basically around 3 to $4,000 a year. So when you divide that by 12, you're looking at 3 or $400 a month.

[A]

Why is it so cheap? 300 bucks a month sounds really cheap for this. Is there, is there a reason for that? Have you experimented with pricing?

[B]

I really played with pricing. The reason is because we're on a credit system. It narrows it down to about 7, 8 cents a credit. Mock simulated interview consumes 100 credits. So when you multiply the 7 cents times the 100 credits, you're at about $7 per.

[A]

Got it.

[B]

Mock interview. And remember, we're competing against that free stuff that's out there on the marketplace that people tend to like but don't offer the kind of depth and comprehensiveness that we offer at Interview Focus.

[A]

So what's the challenge today?

[B]

Acquiring customers is our biggest challenge. Just getting the word out that we have this, the world's best AI driven software, but not many people know about us.

[A]

And what would be your dream outcome just for you personally, in three years from now, if we were having a conversation and you said, John, that worked out great, what does your life look like? What does your business look like?

[B]

Where my dream would be to have the business generating $5 million.

[A]

So what I'm thinking now is that Craig has a lot of pieces of this business that could really work. They're just not structured properly. It's almost like you have a whole bunch of good pieces and they're just sitting in Jell O and we need to piece them all together and that's what we're going to do now. So there's a bunch of stuff that we can get into on the business and getting customers and we'll look at your website in a second. But there's something you said that I just want to zoom in on here. You said that you want to be coaching people. I noticed on your site you have, I think it was for $250 per session you'll do a 60 minute coaching session. I assume that's you providing the service yourself, right?

[B]

That is, that is me. And if And I had done 95% of all coaching sessions. If I ever get too busy or I. I'm not available, then there's other colleagues of mine that I can use to help.

[A]

And how much of your revenue today comes from those coaching sessions?

[B]

So in the last year, I did about 200 sessions at 250 an hour. So you're looking at $50,000. So it's a quarter of the total.

[A]

Would you want that to be more of the business or is that just keeping the lights on?

[B]

I don't necessarily want it to be more because I'm here to push out the platform. I think that can scale so much easier. I have only so much time available each week, each month. I like to take some vacations with my family. So I think that pushing out the platform, having that scale and that being able to help so many different companies. We have a list of 20 different verticals. Besides the staffing and the career center and military, this is a great platform to help children that are homeschooled, sororities and fraternities. The list goes on and on.

[A]

As soon as Craig says, I have 20 verticals, 20 avatars I could sell to. Oh my Lord. Please tell me you don't actually think about 20 different kinds of customers. What a nightmare. You want to have one customer that you sell to, one single product and one way to get them. One customer getting channel. And if you can just figure out that trifecta, one customer, one channel and one product, you can scale to a million dollars on that one business. If you need to try to sell 20 different things to 20 different people to get to a million bucks, you're doing it wrong. This episode is brought to you by my Playbook website selling machine, available right now at John dav. Here's the truth. Your website is either making you money or it's costing you sales every single day. And most businesses just aren't optimizing their websites as they should be. This leads to fewer meetings booked, lower average order value, and just a whole lot of people clicking away as fast as they arrived. That's revenue you're losing. You can change all that right now with the insights in my Playbook website selling machine. Grab your free [e-mail] Playbook all right, so the thing I want to zoom in on is the entrepreneur product market fit. Because everyone talks about product market fit. There's also the entrepreneur here. And so there's a chance that you actually enjoy doing the in person coaching and that's what you really want to do. But you have this software on the side and I've seen that many times. Sounds like you're telling me that's actually not what you want to do, but you're doing it because it's an easy way to make money, which is, I think, great. I think you should fund this business with services as much as you can so that you can keep paying the bills. But your goal really is for this to be a successful SaaS software business. Am I right about that?

[B]

Yes, a hundred percent.

[A]

The entrepreneur has to be aligned with the goal and that's why it's so important. When I'm talking to entrepreneurs like this, it's not about what I want or what I think it's best, it's what do you want? I have a feeling that if I were to talk to Craig in two or three years, you he might say, hey, John, I actually abandoned that software concept and I went all in on the coaching and I'm making a ton of money because that's what lights his heart up. That's what makes him really excited anyhow. The personal coaching and seeing the look on someone's face when they actually get that dream job, I think that actually might be a better business for Craig. But at the end of the day, it's up to the founder. So the challenge right now, you want to get more customers and I'm going to pull up the website right now. When I went to the website I noticed, I went right to the pricing page and I noticed you've got individuals and I guess you're kind of sunsetting this, right?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Okay, so the individual pricing you have here and the organization pricing you have here and then below that you've got your interview coaching, which is the one quarter of the revenue that we talked about. There's a whole lot of customers that you're trying to serve. You're trying to. You just mentioned me. You have 20 verticals, but you've also got $200,000 in revenue. And I'd love to see you get to a million dollars in revenue with one vertical and one avatar. Do you think that's possible with the Ohio State kind of customer?

[B]

Absolutely, because there's 3,000 colleges out there, maybe a thousand major universities. And having been in this industry several years, I'm familiar with what's out there and what they're using is very outdated technology. But it was a shrewd player that signed colleges to multi year contracts and so that, that's been preventing me from breaking through.

[A]

So there's an existing player in the market that is offering a service that is preventing you from selling your service into these customers.

[B]

Correct. But having taken it myself, very outdated, antiquated technology.

[A]

It's very, very hard for a new player to come into a market with better. Better is a very tough proposition. That's why the only positioning is counter positioning for a new player. We have to really throw stones at the current method and say our method works because it's different. And even if it's not different, even if the meat of it is kind of the same thing, there's gotta be something. You know, the analogy I use is always in the health industry. So you look, you know, there was the Atkins diet, and there's the Paleo diet, then there's the this diet, that, that diet. And they all might have similarities, but you have a different method. And that's why, because they're counter positioning to what's popular at the time. So if that really is the challenge that you come into an organization and they say, we already have this, what is your pitch today? To say, no, no, you should go with us. Because why?

[B]

Because we are so much more comprehensive in the feedback we provide. Not only the content of our answers, but also in the 10 different soft skills that we evaluate. Eye contact, how many filler words, how many ums likes, you know, so are you saying we evaluate 10? Most other platforms do three or four.

[A]

So I'm still hearing it's a. It's a better version. Is there anything that's fundamentally different, even on the surface level of how somebody OnBoards with you versus the competitor? How a student or a job seeker would engage with your service versus somebody else? You mentioned, for example, looking at things like eye contact, ums, uhs. Is that something the other guys do as well?

[B]

Some do, some don't. Our onboarding is really quick. In an hour, you could be up and running. They take days.

[A]

I'm guessing you really didn't get fully started with this until 2021. 2022.

[B]

Exactly. You're exactly right. But I finally said to myself, look, you've got to leapfrog these other players.

[A]

What you're saying to me, Craig, resonates a lot because I have personally been through exactly what you're going through. And I've worked with literally hundreds and hundreds of businesses and entrepreneurs that have been through the same thing. And I'm going to tell you the honest truth, and then we can kind of go from there one way or the other. The honest truth is, when I was in the situation that you were in. And maybe I was in it for even longer. I eventually pivoted entirely because there's never a win when the line, when your internal dialogue is, oh, they wanted that thing, and now I have it. Because there's always going to be a new feature and you're always chasing the next API and the next bug that breaks and the next developer that quits. And as you scale, the problems just become bigger. But running a software company where it's. You build it once and you sell it dozens or hundreds or thousands of times, you're always going to have clients complaining and you're always serving the biggest client, frankly, to keep you in business. I had this conversation with Harley, the president of Shopify. In their early days, they were constantly struggling to build because all they could do was serve the client that asked for this, asked for that. And that's a really tough position to be in. I think the gut check is I don't think you're ever going to win on features. I don't think there's ever going to be something where it's like, hey, if I build this, they're going to be with me. Because what I'm really looking at this. Do they really want to switch in the first place? Let's go back to Ohio State. Why did they go with you? Did they have a provider that they left or did they have nobody?

[B]

They had nobody. They were doing it manually.

[A]

Have you ever sold an organization that had something in place and you actually stole the business, or has that never happened?

[B]

And because they were. The downtime of that platform bothered the downtime? Yes.

[A]

Talk to me about the downtime.

[B]

So for them, it was creating problems when they were scheduling students to come into the career center to take a mock interview. And the platform was down to where it became chaotic. And so we have a page that you can see exactly how the platform is performing. We're very transparent about it. And fortunately, thus far, we've been up something like 99.6% of the time.

[A]

Hmm. Okay. So reliability, that's one, you know, uptime guarantee. Is there any other example of somebody you've sold and they've switched for any reason other than uptime guarantee giving clients quick support?

[B]

Most of it is combined with our integration price and development price. So it's really nothing extra. But we're very customer centric and just. I want to come back to your point about pivoting based on what we've been hearing in the marketplace. You know, my example would be Amazon if he gave up having had Such difficulty getting that platform off the ground, he wouldn't exist today. Now that I'm where I'm at, we're seeing an acceleration of interest in demand that I've never seen before because I really just increase, you know, 10% a year. The business has taken off and it's just really getting people aware of it so that they can utilize the service.

[A]

You bring up the example of Amazon. Are you trying to say that using that more of just an inspirational story, like if I, if he had given up, it wouldn't be where it is today.

[B]

Correct, sure.

[A]

And we can find examples like that. And I listen, I love the vision, I get the passion of it. That's not a strategy though. A lot of entrepreneurs love the idea of getting into software and then when they actually start a software business, they realize it's terrible for all kinds of reasons. Making software is hard. Making one piece of software that many people are going to use is really hard. You become a slave to all these different customers asking for a thousand different features. And then you get into things like web developers and designers and then different time zones and offshore teams, talent. And this is a nightmare for most entrepreneurs who don't come from a software background, who aren't developers. And that's why most software companies, frankly, that work are either started by a developer where you can make the product yourself, or a co founder situation where you have a builder, someone who can do it, and then a hustler or a visionary, someone who can execute the business side of it. It's not because you're not talented enough to manage people, it's that managing the development of a software platform is just really, really hard. I've done it, I do not recommend it. So the challenge of we don't have the services, the specific features that these clients want. There's no software in existence that has all the services that clients want. Companies use Salesforce, they use HubSpot, they use Shopify. There's always things that we want that we need to find workarounds for. So that in itself isn't a reason to not choose you. If I had to guess, I would say, and this is why I'm digging into the who's on the market right now. It sounds like you're dealing with a problem where there's entrenched players and there's not really a motivation for people to move. You know, there's this example of, you know, there's three kinds of problems and there's three kinds of, of things that a product can solve. There's the nice to haves. There's the I'm losing sleep over this and there's I'm bleeding from the neck over this problem. And the ideal is you want to be solving a problem for people where they're bleeding from the neck and you're the only guy selling band aids.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like that's where we want to get to. And right now it feels like you're in the nice to have phase, which you can build a business on. Nice to have. You're just kind of slugging it out. What is it that that you think is the need to have peace? You've mentioned uptime, reliability. You've mentioned customer support. Is there any reason why the head of education at some school would need to switch to Craig Software?

[B]

Yeah. Yes. And that reason is comprehensiveness of what we offer. That one person in a 20 minute interview answering eight interview questions can do what nothing else that no one else on the market could do.

[A]

And can you prove that you have data, you have case studies, testimonials to that effect?

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

Okay, where are they? Can I see any of them on your website, on your social media?

[B]

Yes. If you go under success stories, you'll see the Ohio State success story and case study. And then below that there's a Denver Housing Authority, there's the Colorado Housing Authority. And so let's talk about Denver Housing Authority, which is a business out in Colorado. They utilize us to help their employees interview better for internal positions.

[A]

Okay, two more questions before I get into some recommendations that you might like, you might not like. What is the price point strategy? Why you're charging 300 bucks a month. Is that what everyone charges? Like I said, it sounds cheap. Just as somebody who sells expensive stuff to companies, I've never sold anything for 300 bucks. And I sell to companies that are smaller than Ohio State. Why are they paying so little?

[B]

What I want to do is really permeate the marketplace. And I felt that keeping it at the $300 price point approximately helped me do that. I'm looking for generating millions of dollars of sales.

[A]

Do you have any idea what your competitors charge?

[B]

Yes. What do they charge $29 a month for? I think three months of unlimited mock interviews.

[A]

Are there players that are selling? So all the colleges like Ohio State and all the others who are working with your competitors, are they paying around all in 300 bucks a month or are they paying way more than that?

[B]

Depending on the number of students and graduate students at the school, they're paying 4 or $5,000 on up to $40,000 if it's a University of Michigan with 50,000 students.

[A]

Per month.

[B]

Sorry, per year.

[A]

Per year. And you are charging the $300 is the monthly fee that you're charging?

[B]

That's right. So we're at 30, 600 to 4,000.

[A]

Okay, so they're charging 10 times or 12, 13 times what you're charging.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Okay. What are your costs right now? It sounds like you've got one employee, maybe it's yourself. Are there any fixed costs you have to worry about? What's your monthly burn rate?

[B]

$5,000 a month.

[A]

You're paying $5,000 all in. So it's costing you 60,000 bucks a year to run this company. You're making 200,000. So you're clearing a net profit of 140,000.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I mean, it sounds good on paper. Right, Right.

[B]

So let's grow that. Let's grow that. Let's grow that business at 70%.

[A]

Exactly, exactly. And for the listener and the viewer here, I'm being facetious because obviously Craig's salary is going to eat up the 140 because you got to pay yourself something too.

[B]

Right?

[A]

This episode is brought to you by my one minute marketing roadmap [e-mail] In 60 seconds, you'll get a custom report showing you how people are finding your brand, where you're losing them, and how to fix it. We used a decade of data from Influicity and layered in AI to give you a real action plan. It's fast, it's free, and it might just change your business. Go to johndavids.com roadmap and get yours right now. So, all right, there's a few things I'm thinking about. So I actually think you have a really, really great product here and a big opportunity. I just think it's a framing issue, it's an offer issue, it's definitely a pricing issue. And there's a whole lot of proof and testimonials and case studies that you just do not have over here. So I want to go back and I just want to give you my take on when I'm looking at your website, what I'm seeing. Okay, So I come to the homepage. Nice looking site. Develop job ready talent with AI powered interview prep. Okay, interesting headline you got. Requested demo you probably don't have. I don't know how many people are coming to the site and finding you organically anyhow, but it's not bad. The thing that's missing here, the thing that I'd Love to see. First and foremost is those videos. And I would do them like vertical video where you have a time lapse video where they're using your product and they're seeing the results and they're showing their, their change in real time. Do you have anything like that?

[B]

I'm working on loom videos right now to demo of how it actually functions. I don't have it now, but I'm working on it.

[A]

Okay. So that to me, the proof and the more raw, the better. I don't want it to be polished. I don't want to see it in any kind of orchestrated or produced format. I want to see it look like someone picked up their iPhone and said, man, I just used interview focus. I would have flunked that interview and instead I got the job. Check this out. Out. And then here's what it did. And I have in my book Marketing Superpowers, I have the five questions we ask, what was your life like before you use the product? How has it changed? Where do you think would be without it? The questions are all in there. And I would do those really quick testimonial videos with the customers that use this, the actual users of the product. And I would just be, I would sort of pepper your homepage really with just a column three and three. So you have like six on your homepage here of people using your product and loving it. Because right away that social proof is what's going to sell you, is what's going to bring in the attention first and foremost. Why don't you have any logos? Why don't I see Ohio State's logo on here? Are you allowed to do that?

[B]

We can if you scroll up, please. It says at the top, learn how Ohio State University used to interview Focus to prepare. We can add a logo there, no problem.

[A]

So I think there's a lot of low hanging fruit here above the fold of the website. First of all, you have a lot of white space between the navigation and this green eyebrow or subheader. And then you got the header. And then so I would actually bring this up. I would want to see above the fold, the headline, the logos of who your clients are today. And, and also kind of how this is peeking through. You have a lot of space here. I would have it right there. So someone could actually hit a play button and watch a testimonial in real time. It could be one video where you just have like seven or eight or nine of them. And then you're talking, we're talking about a video sales letter A vsl, but use the actual content of the real life testimonials to bring that through. Do you have all those assets that you could do it today?

[B]

I'd have to collect the testimonial videos from different customers, but I know who I could reach out to and they'd be happy to provide it.

[A]

All right, so that's the first thing I would do because you have so much good data that you're, that you're just not bringing to the surface, it sounds like.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So the second thing is the avatar. Now you've already narrowed down, you've already told me that the individual you're sun setting them, I would get them off the website. I wouldn't even have that there. Who is the one avatar that you would want to sell to? If I said, you know, Craig, you've got to sell to one customer, one type of customer, who would that be?

[B]

It would be the career centers at

[A]

colleges, which is the Ohio State type customer.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

And what's the offer? What's the kind of brief elevator pitch that you're making today to these customers?

[B]

We are offering to them to be their sole interview prep platform for the benefit of the students to build their confidence and help with their interview proficiency. So they get their dream job and

[A]

then they say to you, we already have this other software here, why should we switch to you? And you say, give me a 20

[B]

minutes and I'll let you see the demo and you could see our innovative features.

[A]

Okay. And if you have two minutes, give me the compressed version.

[B]

I could do it in less than that and have done it and I would show them the features that stand out, then help them with a greater percentage of students that would use an interview platform. Because right now it's a very low percentage around America of students that are utilizing the services that the career center offers. It's counterintuitive. They're on a tight budget, but yet that's the area that can help the students the most with their employability.

[A]

Do you ask them what problems they have today with their software?

[B]

Yes. And they're answering, getting a higher percentage of students to use our services. And then once they use it to take advantage of what is offered.

[A]

Do you send these people any videos or any collateral before you get into the in person interview?

[B]

No videos are sent, no collateral messaging.

[A]

Are you having these meetings on virtually? Are you going in person virtually?

[B]

Because they're all over the country.

[A]

And how many of these sales meetings do you have a month right now?

[B]

Two or three a week. So we're looking at, let's say 10

[A]

and you're selling them on a $300 a month package. Pretty much.

[B]

Typically, yes.

[A]

You've got to be really careful with pricing. In this case with Craig, 300 bucks a month is just way too cheap for the kind of customer he's trying to sell and the kind of product he's trying to sell into. His Competitors are charging 5, 10, 15, 20 times what he is charging. And so being so cheap is not a good thing. It doesn't make people happy. It actually makes them a little bit concerned. If I tried to sell you a Rolex for $38, you would say to me, what's wrong with the Rolex? And that's the problem you encounter when you try to sell something and be the cheapest guy on the block. You actually want to go the opposite way. It's actually better to be super premium and then if you need to offer discounts so you can get the business, but coming in super cheap and kind of using that as a badge of honor, it's just a lose lose situation. What do they say about the pricing? Like what's their reaction?

[B]

That it helps with their reduced budget.

[A]

Are you against raising your price?

[B]

No.

[A]

Do you think you could do something where you offer it? They sign a one year contract and you offer a $300 a month for the first six months and the price automatically lifts after that?

[B]

We could entertain something like that, yes.

[A]

I don't know. And we'll get to this in a second. I don't know that people are objecting or buying from you based on your price. It's a net you said it's a pleasant surprise on their end. But you could probably also say the number 400 or you could say the number 700 and they would probably still be happy because you said that you're comparable. You know, the competitor is charging upwards of 2 or 3,000amonth or more. Right. So I think there's just a lot of flexibility here for you to raise your price and still be the better price. And you could also structure it where the price blows up. So you have this is, you know, a lot of accounting software will do this software where they want to get you in, but they know that getting out is very difficult, such as accounting software like I just mentioned or project management. So what they'll do is they'll say our price is $2,000 a month, but we'll give you 70% off for the first six months. And people feel great about it, they sign on and Then they like the software enough, or at least they don't hate it and they're not going to switch and the price increase is built in. So I think you have a very quick win just by doing that with any new customer you bring on. Still gives you the same endorphin rush and it makes them happy when you say it's 300 bucks a month and then the price goes up. Or you could actually frame it the opposite way, which is, hey, our price is 1900 bucks a month, but I'm going to give you 70% off for the first six months.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So the sales process I think could be optimized quite a bit. You said you're at a 20% close rate, which means you probably have room to improve.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

You know, 30, 35% would be kind of a good place to be. It sounds like the missing piece here from the website and from the sales process you described is I would want to see a lot more collateral being sent before you get on the phone so that by the time you get on the phone, they're already bought in. It's just a matter of answering any questions or getting to the objections. So what's the exact path that somebody gets to from not knowing who you are to getting on the phone with you?

[B]

They would see a post on LinkedIn or receive an email. Found their email on LinkedIn after doing the ICP and we emailed them or they contacted us having seen a post. Once they contact us, I follow up, try to establish a convenient time for the demo. Once the demo is scheduled, we invite their entire team, whoever needs to attend and the demo is conducted afterwards, a follow up email thanking them for their time as well as attaching any kind of pricing or even a proposal that they would need to sign.

[A]

How long of a time is it between the time they book the meeting and have the meeting?

[B]

Typically I would say two to three weeks.

[A]

Okay, so in that two to three weeks you can set up a sequence. Are you using some kind of email automation, a CRM?

[B]

Well, we're using mailchimp right now.

[A]

So you can set up an automation in mailchimp where when you tag your new lead with a certain tag, they get a two or three or four email sequence. And really what I would put in there is I would start with a series of testimonials. So I'd have a page on your website that's just got like bricks and bricks of testimonials or it could be one long video. I actually like the brick because you have each video only 30 or 40 seconds long, and they can just kind of click and scroll through them. And it would just be a wall where they can just keep scrolling. It almost feels like an infinite scroll. Of course it's not. And, and they would, they would just keep seeing all these videos that they could play with little quotes inserted in there. And that's the thing that they would get minutes or a couple hours after they book that meeting, because immediately you want to show them the dream outcome. You want to show them, hey, this is the kind of feedback that you're going to be getting from your, your students, your job seekers when you go to our software. That's the first thing. The next video that I would drop to them in the next email would be a vsl, a scripted video sales letter. Hey, it's Craig Rosen here, founder of Interview Focus. You know, a lot of people are struggling with finding jobs today. And what we found is the main challenge they have. There's actually three things that they have problems with. I would list out thing one that you're going to map back to your product in a few minutes. List out thing two, list out thing three. So thing one could be, you know, they just don't know the decorum they're saying, they're saying, ah, their eyes are going all over the place. And it's funny, this is something we don't learn. We learn about how to answer the questions, but we don't learn about body language. The second thing we find is blank. The third thing we find is blank. You know, I've actually worked with over 10,000 job seekers over my career. I used to work at Procter and Gamble. I've worked at these companies. And this is how. These are the things that I have found that have been preventing people from getting jobs. And it's even harder today with the advent of AI and the tough economy we're in. And that's why I created Interview Focus. And then you go into solving each of the three things you've laid out, and we're excited to talk to you soon. That vsl, which by the way, you could repurpose on your website and all over the place, but that'd be the second thing that I would send them before your meeting. And there's probably two or three other emails you could throw in there with more case studies, more. How does that sound? Is that something you've thought about or tried before?

[B]

Great recommendation. No, I think it sounds awesome.

[A]

And I think that by the time you got onto the meeting, not only would they be familiar with you, they'd know you, hey, you're the guy from the video. But now they have a point of reference of oh, this is actually the outcome. The stakes are higher. Now remember I mentioned the problems of the nice to have the losing sleepover and the bleeding from the neck. Now it's like, oh, I'm kind of bleeding from the neck because my software doesn't do any of this stuff.

[B]

Right, right.

[A]

So, okay, so that, that I think will, will help your sales process quite a bit. The pricing thing I wrote down here three times because I just feel so strongly that you're too cheap. You know, the analogy is what do you like? Do you, what's your guilty pleasure? Do you like watches or cars or nice trips?

[B]

Nice trips.

[A]

Nice trips. So if I said to you, hey, you're going to stay at this beautiful resort, it's, it's the Four Seasons Maui, guess what, it's only 49 bucks a night. You probably say, what the hell's wrong with this hotel? What do they have cockroaches? So that's.

[B]

How is my 250 an hour rate for 1 on 160 minute coaching sessions Ridiculously cheap?

[A]

Ridiculously cheap. I would go higher. I'll tell you why I go higher on that. You think, you think it's a good price.

[B]

Oh, I'm really curious what you thought. You're going to laugh. I raised it recently from 150.

[A]

You're hurting my heart.

[B]

What should it be?

[A]

I'm going to tell you. You're sitting down. Okay. Because I'm going to tell you what I think. Your in person package could be. Your one on one package could be in a second. But just to go back here, the thing that people look at with price when it seems unreasonably cheap is they say what's wrong? And it actually repels some people. There's been software, there's been stuff that I look at, you know, I go to a restaurant and the burger is $2.30. I don't want that burger. You know, beef shouldn't be that cheap. So you have to think about what pricing signals. And it also works on the upper end. You know, there was an article recently in the Wall Street Journal. The top lawyers in the United States these days are charging 3,4000 an hour or more. They are the top lawyers and there's just upwards pricing flexibility. Why can they charge that much? Because people pay it. There's no other reason. I think that you could put together a concierge package that is and maybe it can work in tandem with what we're talking about with the schools. I think there's another avatar here, which I'll get to in a second. But, but the concierge package is you working one on one with some type of, I don't want to say guaranteed outcome, but an outcome that we can promise you. And if we don't hit this, we'll keep working with you until, until you hit it. You know, I'll be your one on one coach. But I would sell that to executives. I would sell that to people who are coming out of a job that has paid them a lot of money and they want another job that's going to pay them the same or even more money and they're willing to spend thousands of dollars. I mean, I think you could price this somewhere between 2 and $10,000 if you targeted the right kind of avatar. Now, do you want to work with those people? Do you want to work with someone who's making $400,000 a year looking to make $700,000 a year?

[B]

I do it currently as I am the interviewing arm of someone here in Charlotte that goes out and seeks those kinds of individuals to help them obtain a seven figure salary.

[A]

So this package, and by the way, this is the other direction you could take the bit. I'm not saying you should, I'm just saying this is the other direction you could take. The business would be a super high end career placement executive coaching service that packages a whole bunch of stuff and then you sell it as one outcome. You don't even sell it as a service. You sell it as, hey, you want this outcome? I'll sell you this outcome and it'll cost you $10,000. This reminds me of forgetting the name of the service right now. But there's like a high end matchmaking service. You know, if you're a multimillionaire, you're not going to go on bumble, you're not going to go on match.com, you're going to use this service. They charge, I think it's a 30,000 or a $50,000 retainer. And their promise is we will find you a spouse. That's it. And people gladly pay this. They print money charging tens of thousands of dollars per engagement. And so I think you could have a very similar model where you say, hey, we charge $10,000 and I'll give you my cutting edge interview focused software, by the way, reskin it, call it something else. It's the exact same product, but that's the executive version of the product. So you call it something else, executivefocus.com and that becomes the executive version of the platform. You sell one on one time with Craig Rosen, you get a 90 minute session, then you get a 30 minute session a week later and you can text me for prep on certain things. You also get research, you also get data. There's probably a lot of of other stuff that you have. The scraps, the raw data of what you pull, even the data that you're looking at of. Hey, here's what we're seeing. Here are the trends we're seeing. If you don't have it, you can license it and you package it all together. Do you have that sort of thing?

[B]

Not currently, but I thought about what you're talking about as something to fall back to.

[A]

What's your why on the on the side project, do one on one coaching interviews? Why?

[B]

I get off on it. I love it. I enjoy helping other people.

[A]

You told me at the beginning that Your goal was $5 million in annual revenue for this business. If I told you you could make $5 million doing the executive coaching yourself, which is the thing that you said you get off on, would you want to do that or would you still want to make the 5 million on the software?

[B]

The combination, I want the hybrid.

[A]

So I start to tell Craig here about the high end coaching business because I actually think this could work really well. Craig's in a unique position where he's legitimately got 10,000 interviews under his belt. He's got the pedigree of working at Procter and Gamble and he aced that interview process where a lot of people don't. It's a notoriously hard interview process. So he has true kind of once in a lifetime expertise that he's acquired and to be able to sell that for 10, 15, $20,000 and then say, hey, I'll give you my personal coaching. All these assets, all this data and this software that I have and the outcome is going to be that you're going to get your dream job and I'll charge you just 20 grand for this job that's going to pay you a million plus in salary. That seems to me actually like a much better business. I'm not buying it. And the reason I'm not buying it is because I can see you smile and I can see the passion you have for helping people. And I get it. I feel the same way myself. If you could help a thousand people change their lives, why help a hundred thousand people get a little bit better

[B]

at something because that little bit better might be the difference and increase their chances of getting the job they really want. I worked for Procter and Gamble. I took four interviews. I got the job. I was lucky. Friends of mine took it 14 interviews and did not get the job.

[A]

I want you to clip afterwards that part of the video where you just said it took me four interviews. It took my friends 15 interviews. I got it. They didn't. I saw this problem and all these people that I hired and here's how I've helped them. That's your vsl, by the way. That's your passion as a founder, that I trust you in what you're doing here. I think there's an opportunity for you to again, go really high concierge and do this as an executive service. You're already doing it. I think you're undercharging, I think raise your prices. There's, I think you deserve it, frankly. And I want to just kind of focus right now on getting this software to a place where I think you can scale. You're at 200,000 today. If we can get you to a million in the next 12 months, I think that'd be great. This episode is brought to you by Influicity's new tool, the AI Ads Generator, available now at johndavids.com ads Great ads aren't about luck. They're about leverage. The brands that win are the ones who can launch faster, test smarter, and outspend everyone else without wasting a dollar. That's exactly what the AI Ads Generator gives you. Instant ad copy that speaks to every customer and feeds the algorithm high performing variations your competitors can't keep up with. It's like strapping a jet engine onto your marketing. And right now it's free. Yes, it's free. Go to JohnDavids.com ads that's JohnDavids.com ads. I think the first thing you need to do if I'm just laying this out for you, is you need to raise your price. Because I actually think it's doing more harm than good. You need to be in a position where people are not wondering, is this some cheap knockoff, weird, you know, thing? He's promising me more uptime and more support, but he's charging 1/10 of the price. There's got to be some rationale there. And like I said, if you want to keep the good pricing for new clients, fine. Just make the pricing automatically increase at a certain point. And I think you really have to do that to A, drive your revenue up and B, not have people be repelled by the price.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

The second thing I would say is pick one avatar. The Ohio State and the folks that you're talking to, and you said you have 20 different avatars you could talk to. I think you got to pick one. And the faster you pick one, the, the faster you're going to scale. Dropping in a vsl, throwing in an email sequence that highlights the great case studies, really quick videos that show how happy people are when they use it. People are going to come prime to your meetings where these, where these leads are already more primed to buy. So I think that alone could probably take you from a 20% close to a 30% close from there. The next objection I think you're going to have to get around is why would we switch from what we already have? Do you have any real, like, if you. In your heart of hearts. I'm not. Don't give me like a fluke example. Is there any real way that you can get people to switch from what they already have? That's worked before.

[B]

I would say by giving impactful demos that prove our features are superior to what they're using currently.

[A]

Okay. I would have thought it was the uptime. I would have thought it was, hey, I'm getting complaints from people from our students that this thing is never up. I got to fix that problem. Is that one of them?

[B]

It could be. It just depends on the school and what they're using. But certain ones that use the platform I'm referring to have a problem with their uptime. But that's not the majority of schools. That's a smaller competitor.

[A]

Got it. Do you have a sales script or any kind of sales format that you follow when you're talking to these leads?

[B]

I do. I have a script. But as you could tell, I, I go off that script from time to time and, and try to sell them on my passion.

[A]

Give me, give me the first 10 seconds. Just the beats of your script. What's kind of the first, second, third question you get to that that I'm answering from them that you're asking of them. Are you starting the sales calls off asking questions or telling them?

[B]

No, definitely asking. How many students are we talking about that could be using it? Some have alumni, some don't. Some have graduate students, some don't. So I need that figure. The other is, are you currently using another platform? Yes. Do you mind telling me who it is? So I'm familiar with it. And then based on all those answers talking about how we're superior.

[A]

So you Ask how many students do you have? Are you using another platform? And will you tell me who it is?

[B]

Right.

[A]

Any other key questions you're asking at the beginning there?

[B]

What? Any problems that you have associated with the current platform that you're using?

[A]

Okay. And do they usually have an answer on that one?

[B]

Sometimes, sometimes not. They just want to see. They're kicking the tires and they want to see what I have to offer.

[A]

So generally speaking, in any kind of a sales script, you're going to have an opening, very, very quick small talk, and then you're going to get to something about the, hey, why did you want to set up this call and why did you want to do it now? Why are we talking right here? Because if they end up saying something like, I'm just trying to get information, you could very quickly follow up with, well, obviously you're a busy person. You're not just looking around for information. Why did you want to talk to me today? And they're going to give you an honest answer to that and it's probably going to hint at their pain. And then the next thing you want to do is actually get into the pain. So what do you use today for this? You use something. If they use nothing, then that's an easy sale. But if they say we use something, great, what are you using and how's that going for you? What are the problems? What are the pain points? And you want to cycle through the pain points really as much as you can to a, elevate the pain. You want them to be in that moment, feeling how frustrating it is using the current product. And you also want to use that data, those points they give you to ensure that you can sell to those points later on. So if in the pain, they mention to you, you know, Craig, we're dealing with downtime every week here. Every week I get complaints from our students. Okay, great. You're going to make a little mental note. I'm going to. And you're going to say you're going to validate that point. Oh, yeah. You know what? Downtime is something we hear about a lot. What else, what else is bothering you? Oh, the other thing is there's no support. I email these guys. They don't get back to me. Yep, yep. A lot of these guys, no support. What else is going on? You cycle through and now you actually are building your sales pitch based on what they're telling you right here. So they're giving those things to you and you've got to get some type of pain. If somebody says to you, I'm meeting with you now because I'm just curious and I have absolutely no pain, then I would say, thanks very much. There's no point in us speaking. I'm not here to just have a conversation. I'm here to try to help you if I can. It sounds like you don't need my help. So there's always going to be some pain, and then at a certain point, you're going to flip that over to, you know what? Based on everything you've told me, A, B, and C, I actually think there's a chance that we could help you. If it's okay, let me go ahead and share with you what we do. They're gonna say, sure, and then you're gonna flip to your sales pitch, which is only gonna be addressing their pain points. So if they say that uptime is not an issue, or support is not an issue, or the product is great, I'm not gonna try to sell them on those things. If somebody's having a great experience with the product, like I said at the beginning, it's gonna be very hard for me to sell them on a better experience because it's already a good experience. I don't need a better experience. Not a need to have. That's a nice to have. But if you're telling me that uptime is driving me crazy and I'm going to get fired because I can't keep this software up, it's making me look bad in my job, I'm going to save you from that. We're going to. We're going to give you software that actually has great uptime and all this other great stuff. And so that's how I think you need to frame your sales pitch. How does that sound?

[B]

Great. Excellent. No, I think you hit it right on the head, and it certainly can be done.

[A]

All right. I think we could keep going here for a while, but I think if you just changed three things here, Craig. I think if you narrow down on the avatar you built a sequence that actually, when you have those two or three sales meetings every week, you're seeding them with content. I think if you got your sales process and your sales pitch to a point where you were doing it like I mentioned, and if you modify the pricing a little bit, not only do I think that you can increase to a 30 or 35% close rate, but you can go from 200,000 to. Lord, you can go from 200,000-to about 900,000 pretty quickly just on the price change and the increased Closing alone. So this is not that far for you to take this from a $200,000 a year business to a million dollar a year business with the same inputs you have today, the same leads you have coming in, the same customers without changing your market. We didn't even talk about your social media or paid ads, nothing like that. You don't need to change that to get this to to be a million dollar business pretty soon. I think you just need to tighten the process you have internally.

[B]

You're singing to the choir and I can't wait to make it happen over the next 12 months.

[A]

All right, guys, those three things I think will make a huge difference. You've got to have testimonials and VSLs and send them out between the time somebody requests a sales meeting and the time you get in front of them. You want to be warming them up. We call it the microwave. We're gonna warm them up as we go through that time. And you do that through lots of testimonials, vsl, and make sure they have that so by the time they get on the call with you, they are warm and ready to buy. The sales process itself, it's so important that you follow a process where you're letting people elevate their own pain and elevating the pain and then being able to come in and pitch your solution based on the problems they've just outlined. And the third thing for Craig is the pricing. You've gotta raise your prices. My God. $300 a month. Oh, my goodness. Get it to a thousand. Get it to 1,500. I think if you tighten up the Testimonials and the VSLs at the beginning of the funnel, that's probably a 10 to 15% lift. If you get the sales pitch tightened up, that's another 10 or 15%. But really the big, big one here is probably a 200 or 300% lift if Craig can get the pricing upwards. And that's how you can take this business from $200,000 to a million dollars in revenue with just three simple moves. And that's just the start. I think this thing could get a lot bigger. Let's see where it goes. What did you guys think of this session? Let me know. Drop me an [e-mail] and get my best stuff to your [e-mail]. If you're spending more than $50,000 a year on marketing, I've got something for you. It's a playbook I wrote called how to Build a social media selling machine. You can grab it now for [e-mail] Playbook. This is the nine step formula we use for our clients at Influicity to turn their social media channels into reliable revenue engines. Grab it right [e-mail] Playbook.