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SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

792: SaaS: $7m ARR Founder Used Ice Cream To Get Customers, How?

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Nathan Latka

Ceo, Entrepreneurs, Founders, Software, Business, Entrepreneurship, Saas, Startups

4.6683 Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2017

⏱️ 24 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

 C. Lee Smith. He’s the CEO of SalesFuel, a multi-million dollar sales enablement firm he founded in Columbus, Ohio in 1989. SalesFuel leverages critical insights that enables its clients to acquire, develop and retain their best employees and customers. The company is launching a brand new product called TeamKeeper that will revolutionize the way managers manage and develop their people which leads to a happy, business culture and a reduction in turnover.

Famous Five:

 

Time Stamped Show Notes:

  • 02:02 – Nathan introduces Lee to the show
  • 02:42 – SalesFuel does sales enablement
    • 02:48 – It helps salespeople to sell better, close more deals and be the trusted advisors for their client
  • 03:23 – SalesFuel leverages critical insights for both sales prospects and employees
  • 03:35 – SalesFuel has 3 SaaS products: AdMall, TeamKeeper and one still in the works
  • 03:59 – TeamKeeper is already up and working
  • 04:13 – AdMall is for media companies
  • 04:22 – When Lee started the company, the idea was to provide business intelligence based on business type
    • 04:35 – SalesFuel currently has over 450 types of businesses that they’re researching
  • 04:41 – The research team is the second largest team in SalesFuel with 10-15 people
  • 04:57 – Total team size is 30-40
  • 05:08 – 2016 total sales is $6-10M
  • 05:30 – SalesFuel was on the internet in 1995 with a few companies still new to the web when they had their first product
  • 05:56 – It was in 1997 when SalesFuel built their first web application
  • 06:25 – An AdMall customer pays an average of $500-1K a month
  • 06:51 – AdMall’s pricing model is based on the size of the sales team
    • 07:41 – The price depends on the range of the number of employees
    • 07:59 – For a digital agency, they have a different price because of the numbers of tools that they use
  • 08:21 – SalesFuel currently has 1500 customers
  • 09:21 – Columbus is a foodie town
    • 10:03 – Lee sent packs of dry ice cream from a local artisan to their potential clients
    • 10:09 – Lee had calls returned to him—he thinks it was the weirdest marketing strategy he ever used
    • 11:10 – Lee closed a deal from that marketing strategy
  • 12:06 – SalesFuel is 100% bootstrapped
  • 12:38 – First year revenue is around $100K
  • 12:50 – Revenue in 2000 was around a million
  • 13:45 – 2010 revenue is close to $3M
  • 14:40 – SalesFuel’s retention rate year over year is above 98%
    • 15:20 – SalesFuel has client and revenue growth year over year
    • 15:54 – Logo churn is equal to revenue churn
  • 16:34 – CAC
    • 16:48 – SalesFuel gets their leads from thought leadership and business development
    • 17:23 – For research and blog, SalesFuel spends a little over $250K annually
  • 17:45 – SalesFuel currently has 2 SDRs
    • 18:02 – Product team has close to 18 people
    • 18:15 – Sales and marketing team has 10 people and the rest are in operation
  • 19:23 – SalesFuel has around 100 new customers every year
  • 20:52 – The Famous Five

 

3 Key Points:

  1. A slow hustle is never a bad strategy— grow slowly and consistently.
  2. There are tons of new ways to gain customers; be creative, bold and just go for it.
  3. Believe that you can and will make it!

 

Resources Mentioned:

  • Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
  • The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
  • GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
  • Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
  • Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
  • Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
  • Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
  • Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
  • Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

He founded AdMall and sales fuel back in 1989.

0:04.2

First year sales, 100 grand.

0:05.7

He's taking his thing to the store to buy a fax machine to process some of their early products.

0:12.1

Now, fast forward, you know, 2010, they're doing $3 million in revenue.

0:15.9

2016, they did well over $6 million, but not quite $10 million.

0:19.1

They're serving over 1,500 customers.

0:21.8

Again, as they help folks, again, more efficiently do data-driven sales and marketing,

0:26.8

check out their new product coming up, Team Keeper.

0:28.8

Totally bootstrapped, Team of 35 in Columbus, Ohio, which I love.

0:33.0

This is the top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their

0:38.8

industry in terms of revenue or customer base.

0:42.5

You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like,

0:46.2

and how many customers they have.

0:49.2

I'm now at $20,000 per talk.

0:51.3

Five and six million.

0:52.3

He is hell-bent on global domination we just broke

0:54.8

our 100 000 unit sole mark and i'm your host nathan latka many of you listening right now

1:01.2

don't have time to listen to every b2b SaaS CEO that i've interviewed if you want to get access to the

1:06.4

database i've created with year over year growth rates customer accounts, customer accounts, margins, and many, many other

1:11.0

metrics and data points, you can go to g-et-l-a-tka.com.

1:16.4

Here's the thing, though, this database, I keep it to myself.

1:19.8

It's so freaking valuable.

...

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