September 1, 2025 • 36 mins
How is your website converting potential customers or franchise buyers for your business? When is the last time you checked? Our guest today is Sahil Patel, who is a landing page expert who shares with us the secrets he’s learned on how to optimize a landing page.
TODAY'S WIN-WIN:
Create a great landing page that makes it easy for your customer to understand what you do and then test it.
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
- Schedule your free franchise consultation with Big Sky Franchise Team: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/.
- You can visit our guest's website at:
- Attend our Franchise Sales Training Workshop:
- https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/franchisesalestraining/
- Connect with our guest on social:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/sahilanamipatel/
ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Meet Sahil Patel, CEO of Spiralyze. He reveals the secrets from optimizing hundreds of landing pages leveraging data from 130k A/B tests, and working with SaaS leaders such as BambooHR, Crowdstrike, Unbounce, and hundreds more.
ABOUT BIG SKY FRANCHISE TEAM:
This episode is powered by Big Sky Franchise Team. If you are ready to talk about franchising your business you can schedule your free, no-obligation, franchise consultation online at: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/.
The information provided in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered financial, legal, or professional advice. Always consult with a qualified professional before making any business decisions. The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host, Big Sky Franchise Team, or our affiliates. Additionally, this podcast may feature sponsors or advertisers, but any mention of products or services does not constitute an endorsement. Please do your own research before making any purchasing or business decisions.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Tom DuFore (00:01):
Welcome to the Multiply your Success podcast,
where, each week, we helpgrowth-minded entrepreneurs and
franchise leaders take the nextstep in their expansion journey.
I'm your host, tom Dufour, ceoof Big Sky Franchise Team, and
as we open today, I'm wonderinghow your website is converting
potential customers or franchisebuyers.
Maybe another question might bewhen is the last time you even
(00:24):
checked?
Well, our guest today is SahilPatel, who's a landing page
expert, and he shares with usthe secrets he's learned from
optimizing landing pages andleveraging data on over 130,000
(00:50):
A-B tests, and he's worked withSaaS leaders such as Bamboo, hr,
crowdstrike, unbounce andhundreds more.
You're going to love thisinterview.
It's super practical with greattips you can implement in your
business right away, so let's goahead and jump right into our
interview.
Sahil Patel (01:07):
My name is Sahil Patel.
I'm the CEO of Spiralize andI'm really glad to be here.
Thanks for having me, tom.
Tom DuFore (01:13):
Well, thank you so much for being here today,
really grateful for it.
And one of the things thatstood out and why I was
interested and excited to haveyou on the show is you are
really a landing page expert.
It's a piece of marketing and,by the way, guilty as charged
where it's something for my ownbusiness that has suffered and
struggled and other marketingthat we've spent probably would
(01:35):
have been more successful withbetter landing pages, and so I'd
love for you, just from a basiclevel, as you're an expert in
this area, just to talk a littlebit about why landing pages
even matter.
What one is.
Just some of these basicfundamentals there.
Sahil Patel (01:52):
Yes, so why do landing pages matter?
Landing pages but I'm going tojust for our audience listening
to this.
Let's define landing pagessuper broadly.
Okay, so if you want to geekout in digital marketing, you
can talk about paid landingpages and organic.
Let's just kind of put thatover here for the moment and
just say working definition.
Landing pages is just anythingwhere someone finds you online
(02:15):
on some kind of web propertythat you own or control.
So I'm also going to put overhere.
If your brand has a presence onFacebook or on LinkedIn or on
Instagram, that's wonderful.
Let's just put that over here,because that's a different kind
of game, that is its own artform, because Facebook controls
that environment and there'sjust very limited things you can
(02:38):
do and there's pros and cons tothat.
But in the middle is the big,wide world of your own and of
however you show up on theinternet.
For most people that's like awebsite and they might spin up
some additional landing pages onseparate domains or subdomains
that are purpose-built, justbroadly, all of that.
Okay, great way to think of it.
(02:59):
This is the front door to yourrestaurant.
Now you can choose how to showup.
If you are McDonald's orChick-fil-A, I think you're an
Atlanta guy, I'm an Atlanta guy,big, important place in Atlanta
and Georgia you show up acertain way.
What is the front door?
There's a drive-thru which is awonderful drive-thru experience
.
It's a signature Chick-fil-Aexperience and they've nailed it
(03:19):
and it's very specific.
Okay, if you're like I'm goingto go on the other end.
If you're a fancy like whitetablecloth steakhouse, people
expect something.
Okay, if you give a Chick-fil-Aexperience and I love
Chick-fil-A, by the way, to a$70 steakhouse experience.
Something is wrong, and viceversa.
So your landing page it's thefirst thing they see.
(03:42):
It's the front door and they'regoing to stay or leave based on
a couple quick, in the firstfive seconds takeaways of just
like am I in the right place?
I'm bringing a date to a fancydinner?
If it feels like fast food,something's wrong.
And if I'm taking the kids fora quick bite before soccer
practice and it's whitetablecloth and someone with a
French accent asking me if I'dlike to talk to the sommelier,
(04:05):
also something is wrong.
So that's what your landingpage is.
That's why it matters Hugelyimportant.
You're not going to even stayto order the number four meal or
have that fancy steak if justin the first few seconds, the
front door is wrong front dooris wrong.
Tom DuFore (04:27):
It's the difference between someone showing up in
dirty jeans and a ripped upshirt and a beat up pickup truck
with no branding, or someoneshowing up in a pressed uniform,
a clean logoed polo and awrapped van or a wrapped truck.
Sahil Patel (04:39):
You nailed it.
In fact, we know the space alittle bit.
We have a customer.
It's a franchised home servicesbusiness and, by the way, that
was one of the takeaways in allof the optimization we did, that
their best performing pages waswhen you showed the truck and
re-uniformed service people inuniform that looked like they
were happy to be there and itoutperformed almost everything
(05:01):
else.
Tom DuFore (05:02):
That's a little nugget here for anyone in the
home services business.
Right, they didn't even know.
Sahil Patel (05:07):
Yeah, well, here's let's just jump right in some
tactics.
A great tactic to try out.
And if you're in home servicesand I want to kind of generalize
this for everyone listening isshow your product, show your
product, show your product.
Showing your product almostalways beats what I call happy
people.
Happy people hurt conversionsParticularly, but this is true
(05:28):
even for service businesses.
Stock photos of happy peopleand you look whether it's
direct-to-consumer, it'sbusiness-to-business, b2b-type
services or software they'refull of these stock photos.
They went to Adobe or whateverand said, oh, we'll get one out.
We'll talk about home service.
Their homepage showed likehappy mom with two kids, it's
(05:50):
great.
It's kind of indirectly sayingif you call one hour, you'll
have a happy household.
It still doesn't tell youanything about the product.
What is the product of one hour?
It's uniformed, professionalservice people in a good truck,
they look good and they have theexpertise.
They're credible to fix yourproblem.
That's the product on a servicebusiness.
Now you shouldn't take my wordon it.
(06:11):
You should run some tests.
We could talk about what thatmeans in a website context.
We did what is the goldstandard A-B testing.
That's what our company doesand the data proves that more
people actually buy when youshow them the product and in the
context of a home servicebusiness, that's the uniformed
people next to a wrap truck.
Tom DuFore (06:31):
You talk a little bit about A-B testing.
Let's dive into that a littlebit.
Sahil Patel (06:35):
Let's talk about how most people, how many
companies, go about making awebsite Stage one.
It's called the prehistoricarea.
They just put some stuff on theweb and the CEO's nephew made
the website in his basementPrehistoric era.
(06:55):
We fast forward a little bit.
There's a little bit of whatpeople call best practice, but
in fact there's thinly disguisedanecdotes.
Someone said, oh, this workedfor me.
My last company or I read ablog that said you should do
this, or maybe, even worse, ourcompetitor's doing it, so why
don't we copy it?
By the way, none of these areterrible ideas, but they don't
(07:17):
actually tell you does anythingwork or not, and what this?
is like and where I'm leading to, is kind of modern website
which, if done well, uses A-Btesting data to make decisions.
So I'll give you the answer.
Now let's use an analogy.
You go to the doctor and shesays hey, tom, I've got this
medicine for your stomach pains.
(07:37):
And you said, oh okay, I'venever heard of it.
What is it?
And the doc goes oh, yeah, Iput this together at home.
You might say, well, has anyoneelse tried it?
My neighbor tried it.
It worked great for him.
Okay, like what?
Do they have the same symptoms?
Is he like is he old guy?
Is he a young guy, by the way?
(07:57):
Like how do you know I'mgetting the right dose?
Like is he my size?
Is he smaller?
I want to know something beforeI pop this thing in my mouth.
That is basically how a lot ofwebsites get made.
Yeah, I gave this medicine tomy neighbor, I conjured it up.
They didn't die.
It's good enough.
Now imagine the doctor saidwell, tom, we put this thing
(08:20):
through an FDA clinical trial.
Half the people got a placebo,half the people got the drug.
We made sure there was men andwomen, old people, young people,
healthy people, sick people inboth groups and we measured how
much better did the people thatgot the drug compare to the
people who got placebo.
And we did this a few differenttimes and, by the way, we did
it for like a couple of months.
(08:40):
We made sure we could, you know, make sure you didn't get
better and then, two weeks later, keel over and die.
Which medicine do you want tosign up to take?
Tom DuFore (08:49):
Well, when you put it that way, I think the answer
is pretty clear.
But that's what.
That's what.
Sahil Patel (08:53):
A-B testing is.
Let's take you have a homepage.
You're selling home services.
You got a franchise operationYou've got.
It's not the only way you getbusiness, but it's an important
way.
You've probably got thousandsof people a month coming to look
at your site, what you shoulddo.
And there's tons of software.
By the way, some of this isfree software.
You don't spend a lot of moneyon this.
You can set it up.
(09:14):
So half your audience, randomlyselected, will see the original
version of your homepage.
Half the audience will seesomething different.
Maybe it's a different message.
Maybe it's a different image.
Right, that image of theprofessional looking, your
professionals, your home, yourservice professionals in a
uniform.
They look incredible, they'vegot the truck, it's branded.
Use that image versus somethingelse.
(09:35):
Maybe you show social proof.
You show hey, we've got a fourand a half star rating on Yelp
and we've had 5,000 peoplereview us.
Social proof can be not always,but can be very powerful.
Half the people see thatversion, half the people see the
other version.
You run it long enough to makesure you get a representative
sample of data and then youmeasure the difference.
(09:55):
And if you do that once, by theway, you're already better off
than most companies, and if youreally want to do it, you do it
over and over and over to findwhat is the optimal version,
because if you haven't updatedyour website in four years,
almost anything will probably bebetter.
The answer is which of those isactually optimal and gets you
more.
That's A-B testing.
Tom DuFore (10:15):
From what I understand, as you've described
this, you can run some A-B testsand once you find a winner this
is kind of like one of these TVshows vote them off or on right
.
The remaining competitors stillhave to compete again, and then
again, and again, and again andagain.
This is kind of what it remindsme of.
Sahil Patel (10:32):
Not to mix our metaphors, but a great analogy
like that is think about, likethe NCAA basketball tournament,
march Madness that's a betterexample, we start with a bunch
of teams.
they face off.
The winner keeps going.
Now here's an interesting thing.
We love the Cinderella story,that number eight seed that
knocks off the number like twoseed.
(10:53):
But in reality most of the timewhat happens to the number
eight seed in the second round?
They lose.
They lose why the other team'sbetter.
Yeah, they got lucky.
And the beauty of sports ingeneral is that on any given day
, especially once you get tothings like a postseason
tournament, everyone's reallygood.
If you're just looking for thebest, everyone's really good.
So it's kind of the same thingas trying to A-B testing.
(11:14):
If you run a test and you onlyrun one test, the cost of being
wrong is very high.
If we crown the winner based onone game, you just don't know
were they lucky or were theygood?
Maybe the other team, someonewas injured or just some other
exogenous factor that's out ofcontrol.
But when you run a bracket, bythe time you get to the grade
eight, certainly by the time youget to the final four, you are
(11:37):
pretty confident.
You've got some of the bestteams in the country.
Every now and then someone willsneak in there, but certainly
over time you've got the bestteams.
Now, in the final game, is theteam that wins necessarily
statistically the best team?
It's a hard call, but what youknow is they had to defend their
(11:57):
win and they'd start over everygame in the bracket, just like
that A-B testing.
So the cost of being wrong goesway down if you continuously
test.
You run a test, you find awinner, you make that your new
control and you put somethingelse against it.
We call that the challenger andyou just keep challenging it.
And the best companies, in fact, may go through four homepages
in a year because every quarterthey're testing new homepages.
Tom DuFore (12:20):
That is very interesting.
Now, I would think, becausethis popped into my head.
As you said, four homepages ina year Sounds like a lot, sounds
outlandish, but not abnormal.
How do these changes impactcurrent customers that might be
coming back to buy new things orrevisit what you're doing?
Sahil Patel (12:44):
Yeah, so great question Are you giving a?
What I'm hearing is do you givedifferent experiences to your
existing customers versus yournew customers?
In marketing speak we call thatnew customer acquisition versus
land and expand or upsell.
So the first thing is I thinkyou got to kind of make sure you
know if you're starting withlike a homepage where kind of
everyone comes, you got todecide who you're for.
But what I've seen done well isthat you have multiple paths,
like on a website, and you mightjust ask people to identify are
(13:08):
you here for the first time orare you an existing or returning
customer?
And if they say yes, I'm areturning customer, then you
show them different content oryou take them to a different
place.
Hey, here's a page for ourreturning customers.
But it turns out just actuallyask.
There's a lot of kind of peoplethat, oh, we should try and
guess and we should try and know.
Most people are not offended ifyou ask them are you a
(13:29):
returning customer or not?
Especially if you put a littletag and says we're asking so we
can give you a tailoredexperience.
It's not intrusive.
Don't hit them with like sevenquestions when they first get
there.
But if you ask them that, Iwould say it's not unlike.
We'll go back to the restaurantanalogy Hi Tom, do you have a
reservation?
Today, when you walk into arestaurant, you're not offended,
they're not asking about allyour dietary preferences and if
(13:51):
you have allergies and if youwant carbonated water or still
water, they're just saying doyou have a reservation?
Because if you do, I'm going totake you right to your table
and if you don't, we'll talkabout how many people you need
to table for four or two.
Tom DuFore (14:06):
And what are you looking for today?
Maybe we can get you inCertainly Same thing on a
website.
You've done A-B testing on over130,000 sites and iterations of
this.
I would imagine, and you shareda couple of these are there a
few kind of best practices orthings that stick out, or maybe
one or two nuggets that you'vegleaned from that as a starting
point?
Sahil Patel (14:23):
Yeah, absolutely.
So.
Let's kind of start with kindof three things that I think
everyone at home listening tothis can use without spending a
lot of money or doing somethingvery elaborate or sophisticated.
And I mentioned one of themearlier, but we'll kind of go
into them.
One is show the product.
Show the product.
Show the product.
(14:43):
So it comes to your website,whether you're a service
business or a widget businesskind of show the product.
Okay, we'll expand on that.
That's number one.
Number two is start with agreat hook.
It can be a visual hook, it canbe a written hook.
Let's start with a great hook.
And number three is that theweb rewards skimmability.
(15:09):
Now, if we build landing pagesfor a living, we imagine
ourselves painting the ceilingof the Sistine Chapel and every
pixel is going to be perfect andit's put together with great
care.
But the reality is the averageperson might be reading it on
(15:29):
their phone.
They've got a kid that they'retrying to get to eat, they've
got their grocery list up inanother browser window and
they're texting with theirspouse.
They're in a highly distractedstate with many things competing
for their attention.
If you can get through to themin the simplest, easiest
possible way, you're going to bemuch better off.
(15:49):
They'll be much more likely tobuy Whatever buy means right.
If you're a service company,probably they're not pulling out
the credit card to spend sixfigures on some kind of service.
They might be just wanting tosay, hey, I'd like to talk to a
sales rep, get a quote.
If you're kind of more in thewidget business, maybe they're
buying there, and if you're inthe software business, certainly
they're not right.
Most people are going to dosome kind of free trial or talk
(16:12):
to a sales rep.
So those three things show theproduct.
Start with the hook, be easy toskim.
Let's back up.
Let's talk about what theseshow the product.
Let me ask get this.
Can you think of the last timeyou saw a car advertisement?
Can you picture that in yourhead and what was happening in
the ad?
Tom DuFore (16:28):
The car was driving on mountains, on a plateau or
something.
Yes, now take that same ad.
Sahil Patel (16:34):
Now subtract the car.
What would you be left with?
I'd be left with some beautifulscenery, maybe some great B-roll
footage, whether you have aservice business, you have a
widget business, you havesoftware like an intangible
product show the product, showthe product, show the product.
And a great way to do this.
I call this the one second test.
It's something everyonelistening can do with zero cost.
(16:56):
It's take your homepage on yourcomputer, open up your browser,
right click and choose GoogleTranslate.
So if you're running a Chromebrowser, it's built in.
Just choose a language thatnone of your friends speak, Just
like Arabic or Urdu or Hindi,Just something that's just your
friends are unlikely to speak.
(17:16):
I'm picking some languages thatare spoken in my home.
Google Translate and it'll turnevery piece of copywriting on
your homepage into a languagethat's non-recognizable.
And what it does is it forcesyour audience to rely on the
imagery.
And if you're a car ad, ifyou're selling a pickup truck,
it doesn't matter what languageit's in.
(17:36):
You're going to see pickuptruck and go pickup truck, Great
.
Okay, you may not know whatthey're saying, but you know
it's for a pickup truck and youknow the value prop of a pickup
truck, say, different from aluxury sedan.
Take your homepage, show it tofive people and just ask them
hey, what do you think thiscompany does.
Now, you're not looking forsomething specific, right?
(17:58):
They might not be able to tellyou that this is HVAC for
commercial high-rises, but theymight say something like oh,
this looks like some kind ofrepair business or this looks
like some kind of home serviceor something.
If you can do that, great.
If you haven't picked yourimagery carefully, you're going
to fail the test.
If you're using stock photos ofpeople sitting wearing a blazer
(18:21):
, crossing their arms in aconference room having fun,
First of all, where are allthese people?
What job do they work at?
That sitting in a conferenceroom is so much fun, Like all
this stock imagery is likethey're looking at a laptop.
Oh, my God, that's awesome.
I was like what are you doingat work?
I love my job, but I'm nothaving that much fun.
So the one second and it's aton of fun, because, because you
(18:42):
show it and people aresomething, you go okay,
something's wrong, Okay.
Number two start with a greathook, right, Landing page,
homepage, any kind of pages.
Your first job is not to getpeople to buy, and it's not even
to get people to understand whyyou're better than whatever
your competitor.
First job is just to get themto stop scrolling and it's
(19:06):
harder than it sounds.
Tom DuFore (19:08):
It's like you said that one second test If you
don't see what it is in almostan instant that you think this
webpage you're on is going to beable to solve your problem.
Whatever you're looking for,you're gone.
It's like out of there.
Sahil Patel (19:22):
Well, it's just even like, what is it?
Sometimes I go to thesewebsites and I'm like I don't
know what you do.
Like, because they have thesebroad aspirations, you know the
best AI powered solution formarketers?
Like, okay, that feels likehalf of the products under the
sun could fit.
Like it's just so big.
Now to give everyone listening,kind of something tangible here
I'll take, if I'm working witha customer, maybe even my own
(19:45):
homepage or landing page, I'lltake it.
I'll then go find threecompetitors they don't have to
be exact, just similar and I'llput them next to each other.
Okay, just like you know, takea little screenshot, put it in a
Word doc or a slide deck andthen just again show it to some
people and just ask them whichone of these jumps out at you.
(20:06):
And it's a wonderful test,because that is what many of
your potential customers, youraudience, are doing.
They'll have navigated.
Look, what do we all do?
We check out a couple things.
You go to a restaurant.
You look at three restaurants.
You're picking a hotel.
You probably look at a couplehotels.
You're looking for HVAC prepare.
You probably don't just buyfrom the first one, probably
look at a couple, look at threeor four competitors.
(20:29):
By the way, you don't have toprove that you're better, just
prove that you're different.
If all the HVAC repairs saywe're the cheapest, maybe your
thing is saying hey, we'll getsomeone to your house in the
first hour.
If all of them say we'll getsomeone to your house in the
first hour, maybe you should say, hey, we have the most
experience or we're the best atmultifamily units or something.
(20:50):
That's an example of a hook.
It doesn't have to be, you know, kind of madman era copywriting
.
Tom DuFore (20:57):
If you've been talking through this, give us a
little background on the company, what you guys do.
How can someone reach out toyou or the company if they're
interested in learning more?
Sahil Patel (21:11):
Well, thank you.
So the name of the company iscalled Spiralize spiralizecom.
We help companies optimizetheir websites.
Most of what we do is businessto business, b2b, using
marketing jargon, and about 30%of what we do is direct to
consumer brands.
And we have this unique thingwe crawl the internet to find
everyone else's AAB tests andthen we run.
Our customers get to run thebest ones and they only pay if
it gives them lift.
(21:32):
Lift here means a higherconversion rate.
If that sounds interesting,check out spiralizecom.
I'm also on LinkedIn.
I post four mornings a week,7.30 am Eastern, always in short
one-minute snippets, sometimesvideo, sometimes not Always
something kind of fun.
Try and sneak a little bit ofthe Eat your Veggies content
into kind of edutainment.
Tom DuFore (21:52):
Well, this is a great time in the show we make a
transition and we ask everyguest the same four questions
before they go.
The first question we ask haveyou had a miss or two on your
journey and something youlearned from it?
Sahil Patel (22:05):
Oh my God, I've had so many misses.
How much time you got.
So this is my second time beinga CEO, my first business, not
to say I don't have misses hereas well, but maybe second time
around At least I'm not makingthe same mistakes, I'm making
new mistakes.
On my first business, we raisedcapital outside company.
It was great for the firstcouple of years.
We raised capital outside thecompany.
It was great for the firstcouple of years.
(22:26):
It was a pure software businessand their expertise, the
investor, was really in servicebusinesses and the way you think
about deploying capital on apure service business very
different than a service or evena service hybrid, software,
service hybrid, which is whatSpiralize is.
And as a result, we got to apoint where they wanted to go
(22:46):
left and I wanted to go rightand it was super painful and it
cost us a bunch of growth.
We ended up finding an amicableparting and I bought them out
of their equity position.
Then we got the company back ontrack and I'd say I want to
give them credit because theyrecognized that we needed to
change them.
They actually came to me andsaid hey, we want to make you an
offer.
Why don't you buy our positionout, we'll do it in a way that
(23:09):
makes it kind of economicallyattractive for both sides.
So credit to them for kind offinding the high road, because
it was kind of both of us weweren't it wasn't like we
weren't at each other's throats,but just it wasn't working and
that was really really painfulthere during that time period it
was enormously stressful.
I thought I was going to losethe business.
It was a huge kind ofdistraction.
(23:31):
No one was happy.
It spilled over, like manythings you do this job as an
owner, operator, ceo it spilledover into my home life and I was
lucky that it didn't cost mekind of everything.
But it took a big toll on, youknow, my home life for sure.
And we ended up buying anacquire I shouldn't say finding
(23:51):
an acquirer.
An acquirer found us and we gotlucky and we'd kind of found a
path back to growth.
But you know, in the big schemeof you know I think, the
entrepreneur's dream, you havethis big exit, everyone's happy,
and there's kind of this greatfiscal outcome.
This one was in the so-so realm.
Now, on the other hand, thebusiness is part of a bigger
company now, kind of inperpetuity.
They're doing a good jobrunning it.
(24:12):
You know, permanent home forthe employees and the customers
and I'd been there for 10 years,I'd taken it as far as I could
take it, so in that sense it wasa good outcome.
On the other hand, you know, I'mworking for a living.
Now I'm not in the Caribbean,which is okay also, but I think
that's the sober reality is.
You know, for most people, ifyou get to an exit, it's not
(24:33):
always this big kind of home runevent.
You know the investors I thinkthey would definitely say it was
not a great financial returnfor them, and I think we should
all be.
You know, everyone likes tojust play the hits and I think
that creates this kind ofperception that, like everyone
else is killing it.
And me, as a owner operator,founder boy, I'm the only one
(24:55):
that's kind of struggling,trudging uphill.
So that's why I like to sharekind of just the unvarnished
reality of what happened there.
Tom DuFore (25:02):
Well, thanks for sharing the details and some of
the specifics on that.
And every success story hasfailures along the way and
missteps, or I should have goneleft instead of right at that
point in time, or whatever,right, you know, we all have
those moments.
Let's take a look at the flipside a make or a highlight or a
(25:23):
win.
Sahil Patel (25:23):
Here's how I would describe it.
I think one of the things Ilearned from it is, when you're
running a business, there'speaks and valleys and in reality
there's more valleys than peaks.
So one of the things I think,as a second time CEO, I learned
is to learn to live in thevalley.
Now you shouldn't be intent andcomplacent with learning, with
living in the valley.
You should kind of climb out,otherwise you don't have a
(25:47):
business.
But it was a tough lesson but avaluable lesson to learn.
It was like, hey, you gottaaccept that being in the valley
is part of being, it's part ofthe job.
You know, I worked in fast foodwhen I was in high school and
they used to.
I worked at Wendy's and theyused to tell us something
because you had to wear this hat.
No one liked to wear the hatand they said but you flip
burgers, wear the hat, that'swhat you want to be, a CEO, you
(26:07):
want to run it.
Whatever your title is owneroperator, ceo, franchise owner
you flip burgers, you're anowner operator.
You got to live in the valley.
That's part of it.
So certainly we've had atSpiralize.
We've had some nice successwith growth, profitability, with
delivering results for ourclients.
Not every day is a perfect day,but I think that's one of the
(26:31):
things I've learned is, youlearn to live in the valley and
you accept that.
Hey, that's part of the job,because if you don't, I think
you drive yourself nuts.
I think you're just signingyourself up for a lot of
unhappiness.
Tom DuFore (26:42):
Well, let's talk about a multiplier.
The name of the shows multiplyyour success.
You're in technology andmarketing and all of these
things that have multipliersbuilt in, so I'd love to find
out if you've used a multiplierto grow yourself, personally or
professionally, or organizationsyou've run.
Sahil Patel (26:59):
Yeah.
So I think there's three thingsthat have been multipliers.
I love the question, I love howyou framed it.
One is get professional therapyand get it before you need it.
Now, if you don't, I mean getit number one, but even better
is get it before you need it Now.
I learned that the hard way andI'm lucky because I'm married to
(27:21):
someone whose background is inclinical psychology.
My wife is trained as aclinical psychologist.
She works in public health now,so she's not seeing patients in
private practice.
But thankfully, when I was kindof at the lowest of lows she
recognized like hey, something'snot right, you need help.
And that was instrumental forme, also for our marriage, and
(27:41):
not everyone, but I'm not sayingthat but you can do that and
still end up in a place.
That's not great, but itcertainly made a difference and
I think it's true for mostpeople.
So I would say, and if you doget to the place where things
are good I'd say it's kind oflike working out, like you out,
you get in shape you shouldn'tstop because you're going to
(28:01):
probably fall back on bad habits.
You work out, get in shape, andthen you start eating junk food
and not running.
What's going to happen?
You end up in a bad place.
I think the same thing is truefor mental health and I think if
you get to a good place, youshould keep working.
You may want to change yourpattern or what type of therapy
you're doing, but you should doit.
That's number one.
Number two have a peer group ofpeople who are your real peers,
not your employees and also notpeople that control your
(28:23):
paycheck or your investors Realpeers, really helpful.
I have a CEO peer group.
We meet every two weeks.
It's great, it's a form oftherapy, but it's a different
thing.
Number two I'd say justtactfully for me I spend lot of
my time with customers, sales,and about three years ago and we
all do this thing that we'redoing right now, which is in the
model, we interact through zoomwindows.
(28:46):
Now I'm a big fan of in-personstuff.
I try to do as much in personbut still in in 90 of what I do
is through a, through a computerscreen.
So I hired a voice coach.
She's's incredible.
She actually I didn't know thiswhen I hired her, but she
actually works on the TV showthe Voice.
Now she's not on camera, butshe's one of the people behind
(29:07):
the scenes coaching thecontestants and she worked with
me on just on my presentation.
You know voice and pitch anddiction and speed and just
conveying emotion.
Really hard thing to do and Ithink those skills, whether
you're in you work on a job site, you work on Zoom, you work in
digital marketing, you work inHVAC repair we all communicate
and those skills it's just likeanything else.
(29:29):
If you're a musician, you wouldhire a coach to help you be a
better musician.
If you're a sing opera, youwould hire a professional person
to improve your voice.
If you're doing what we do,which is communicating with
clients, hiring someone to helpyou with how you communicate and
come across it was a bigmultiplier and I reached that
pretty late in my career.
(29:50):
I'm 47, so I was like maybe 42,43 when I did that.
Tom DuFore (29:54):
My regret is.
Sahil Patel (29:55):
I didn't do that sooner.
Tom DuFore (29:57):
Excellent, and the final question we ask every
guest is what does success meanto you?
Sahil Patel (30:03):
Look, I think that there's professional success and
personal success and I thinkthe thing I've learned from
doing this second time around isnot to attach one to the other,
Because you can have one, youcan sometimes have the other.
By the way, you could also haveneither of those and I don't
think you necessarily have tochoose between the other.
But I think there's differentways to keep score and you don't
(30:24):
Try not to conflate the two.
So for me, in my personal life,I'm lucky.
I've got a wonderful wife, twogreat kids, and keeping the
score there is very intangibleand I try not to connect that
with my bank account, which isvery intangible, and I try not
to connect that with my bankaccount, which is very tempting
to do, especially if you get toa point where you've had some
whether it's a modest ormoderate amount of success or a
(30:46):
lot.
But I'm lucky, I've had somesuccess professionally, so I try
to disconnect it from that, Ithink.
On the professional life, look,I have a duty to the
shareholders of our company togrow the company at a certain
pace, to have a certain amountof profitability and to be
delivering results for myclients, and I think between the
(31:06):
hours of the morning and whenwe stop.
Those are the three main thingsI think about.
There's a whole bunch of otherthings behind it, but I think
having clarity on that andthat's separate how I think
about my value as a person orwhat kind of husband I'm going
to be or what kind of dad I'mgoing to be to my kids.
I try to have some hobby.
I think having some hobbies andrelease valves.
(31:29):
They don't have to besophisticated.
I do a little bit of music onthe side just for fun.
I tried it the other way andit's really not a great way to
live.
I think many of us have beenlike well, if I just quit all my
hobbies, I don't do anythingelse and all I do is work.
The reality is there's aninfinite amount of work you can
do.
There's always an email you cananswer.
(31:49):
There's always a Slack messageyou need to respond to.
There's always a client thatwants your attention.
Tom DuFore (31:54):
You got to have those other things to make you
kind of your whole you and, aswe bring this to a close, is
there anything you were hopingto share or get across that you
haven't had a chance to yet?
Sahil Patel (32:05):
thank you for having me and, by the way, what
you do is so much harder thanwhat I do.
I get to come and talk aboutsome of my favorite things ab
testing and websites and, as ahost you have and I'm sure you
probably are might be doing oneof these after me.
You probably did one before meyou got to speak intelligently
about what your guests have.
That's really hard to do, soyou're really good at this.
For anyone who is in theespecially in the B2B marketing
(32:29):
space, and you care aboutwebsites, spiral Eyes.
We're actually holding our firstever conference next February
in Fort Lauderdale, so it's abeautiful location in winter
While the rest of the country isshivering.
We're going to be 76 degreesand sunny, it's near the beach
(32:49):
and it's going to be on allthings websites and it's going
to be hands-on, tactical nospeakers, no keynotes, no slide
decks, no one trying to pitchyou to buy their book.
It's going to be led by expertsin the field on all things
website.
So if that sounds interesting,you can Google it.
It's called Above the FoldSpiral Eyes Above the Fold.
I think you'll get somethingfrom it.
Tom DuFore (33:06):
Sahil, thank you so much for a fantastic interview
and let's go ahead and jump intotoday's three key takeaways.
So takeaway number one is whenhe talked about landing pages
and just defining that and Ithought it was great.
He made it simple.
It's anything where someonefinds you online, basically a
(33:27):
web property, and he said it'sdifferent from a social media or
social property and he saidthink of your landing page as
the front door to a restaurant.
Takeaway number two is hetalked about how A-B testing
impacts your customer experienceand he said there's multiple
paths that your customers cantake and he talked about a
(33:49):
current customer or returningcustomer versus a prospective
customer and I like the analogywhen he said when there are
buttons that say returningcustomers, click here.
And he said compare that to arestaurant asking do you have a
reservation today.
I thought that was a greatcomparison to really help
understand that.
Takeaway number three is when hegave the three things to do or
(34:12):
that you can do to improve yourlanding page and conversions.
I thought it was great.
He said number one show theproduct.
Show the product, show to theproduct.
I thought it was great.
He said number one show theproduct, show the product, show
to the product.
I thought that was great.
Show the product, show theproduct.
Show the product.
Number two he said start with agreat hook or a great visual or
a written hook, and he said usethe one second test.
And he said, as an example,convert the language on your
(34:36):
website to some foreign languageyou don't understand.
Take a screenshot and askseveral people you know to do a
one-second test and ask do youknow what this website does or
what this company does?
I thought that was great.
The third idea or strategy hetalked about is the idea about
skim ability and how easy is itto skim the website?
(34:58):
And he said the average personis reading on their phone.
Is it to skim the website?
And he said the average personis reading on their phone is
likely to be highly distracted.
So is it easy to skim, to walkthrough and to see that?
So I thought that was a greatexample.
And now it's time for today'swin win.
So today's win win really comesfrom the entire episode.
(35:19):
It's pretty simple to me, it'screate a great landing page that
makes it easy for your customeror prospective customer to
understand what you do and thentest it.
So I thought that was just agreat takeaway that I took out
of this and I think, if you cando this, it's going to be a win
for your customer that I tookout of this and I think, if you
(35:40):
can do this, it's going to be awin for your customer.
It's going to be a win for yourcompany and a win for everyone
involved.
And so that's the episode today.
Folks, please make sure yousubscribe to the podcast and
give us a review, and rememberif you or anyone you know might
be ready to franchise theirbusiness or take their franchise
company to the next level,please connect with us on our
website, bigskyfranchiseteamcom,where you can schedule your
free, no obligation consultationto assess and help understand
(36:05):
what your needs might be.
Thanks for tuning in and welook forward to having you back
next week.
Welcome to the Multiply your Success podcast,
where, each week, we helpgrowth-minded entrepreneurs and
franchise leaders take the nextstep in their expansion journey.
I'm your host, tom Dufour, ceoof Big Sky Franchise Team, and
as we open today, I'm wonderinghow your website is converting
potential customers or franchisebuyers.
Maybe another question might bewhen is the last time you even
(00:24):
checked?
Well, our guest today is SahilPatel, who's a landing page
expert, and he shares with usthe secrets he's learned from
optimizing landing pages andleveraging data on over 130,000
(00:50):
A-B tests, and he's worked withSaaS leaders such as Bamboo, hr,
crowdstrike, unbounce andhundreds more.
You're going to love thisinterview.
It's super practical with greattips you can implement in your
business right away, so let's goahead and jump right into our
interview.
Sahil Patel (01:07):
My name is Sahil Patel.
I'm the CEO of Spiralize andI'm really glad to be here.
Thanks for having me, tom.
Tom DuFore (01:13):
Well, thank you so much for being here today,
really grateful for it.
And one of the things thatstood out and why I was
interested and excited to haveyou on the show is you are
really a landing page expert.
It's a piece of marketing and,by the way, guilty as charged
where it's something for my ownbusiness that has suffered and
struggled and other marketingthat we've spent probably would
(01:35):
have been more successful withbetter landing pages, and so I'd
love for you, just from a basiclevel, as you're an expert in
this area, just to talk a littlebit about why landing pages
even matter.
What one is.
Just some of these basicfundamentals there.
Sahil Patel (01:52):
Yes, so why do landing pages matter?
Landing pages but I'm going tojust for our audience listening
to this.
Let's define landing pagessuper broadly.
Okay, so if you want to geekout in digital marketing, you
can talk about paid landingpages and organic.
Let's just kind of put thatover here for the moment and
just say working definition.
Landing pages is just anythingwhere someone finds you online
(02:15):
on some kind of web propertythat you own or control.
So I'm also going to put overhere.
If your brand has a presence onFacebook or on LinkedIn or on
Instagram, that's wonderful.
Let's just put that over here,because that's a different kind
of game, that is its own artform, because Facebook controls
that environment and there'sjust very limited things you can
(02:38):
do and there's pros and cons tothat.
But in the middle is the big,wide world of your own and of
however you show up on theinternet.
For most people that's like awebsite and they might spin up
some additional landing pages onseparate domains or subdomains
that are purpose-built, justbroadly, all of that.
Okay, great way to think of it.
(02:59):
This is the front door to yourrestaurant.
Now you can choose how to showup.
If you are McDonald's orChick-fil-A, I think you're an
Atlanta guy, I'm an Atlanta guy,big, important place in Atlanta
and Georgia you show up acertain way.
What is the front door?
There's a drive-thru which is awonderful drive-thru experience
.
It's a signature Chick-fil-Aexperience and they've nailed it
(03:19):
and it's very specific.
Okay, if you're like I'm goingto go on the other end.
If you're a fancy like whitetablecloth steakhouse, people
expect something.
Okay, if you give a Chick-fil-Aexperience and I love
Chick-fil-A, by the way, to a$70 steakhouse experience.
Something is wrong, and viceversa.
So your landing page it's thefirst thing they see.
(03:42):
It's the front door and they'regoing to stay or leave based on
a couple quick, in the firstfive seconds takeaways of just
like am I in the right place?
I'm bringing a date to a fancydinner?
If it feels like fast food,something's wrong.
And if I'm taking the kids fora quick bite before soccer
practice and it's whitetablecloth and someone with a
French accent asking me if I'dlike to talk to the sommelier,
(04:05):
also something is wrong.
So that's what your landingpage is.
That's why it matters Hugelyimportant.
You're not going to even stayto order the number four meal or
have that fancy steak if justin the first few seconds, the
front door is wrong front dooris wrong.
Tom DuFore (04:27):
It's the difference between someone showing up in
dirty jeans and a ripped upshirt and a beat up pickup truck
with no branding, or someoneshowing up in a pressed uniform,
a clean logoed polo and awrapped van or a wrapped truck.
Sahil Patel (04:39):
You nailed it.
In fact, we know the space alittle bit.
We have a customer.
It's a franchised home servicesbusiness and, by the way, that
was one of the takeaways in allof the optimization we did, that
their best performing pages waswhen you showed the truck and
re-uniformed service people inuniform that looked like they
were happy to be there and itoutperformed almost everything
(05:01):
else.
Tom DuFore (05:02):
That's a little nugget here for anyone in the
home services business.
Right, they didn't even know.
Sahil Patel (05:07):
Yeah, well, here's let's just jump right in some
tactics.
A great tactic to try out.
And if you're in home servicesand I want to kind of generalize
this for everyone listening isshow your product, show your
product, show your product.
Showing your product almostalways beats what I call happy
people.
Happy people hurt conversionsParticularly, but this is true
(05:28):
even for service businesses.
Stock photos of happy peopleand you look whether it's
direct-to-consumer, it'sbusiness-to-business, b2b-type
services or software they'refull of these stock photos.
They went to Adobe or whateverand said, oh, we'll get one out.
We'll talk about home service.
Their homepage showed likehappy mom with two kids, it's
(05:50):
great.
It's kind of indirectly sayingif you call one hour, you'll
have a happy household.
It still doesn't tell youanything about the product.
What is the product of one hour?
It's uniformed, professionalservice people in a good truck,
they look good and they have theexpertise.
They're credible to fix yourproblem.
That's the product on a servicebusiness.
Now you shouldn't take my wordon it.
(06:11):
You should run some tests.
We could talk about what thatmeans in a website context.
We did what is the goldstandard A-B testing.
That's what our company doesand the data proves that more
people actually buy when youshow them the product and in the
context of a home servicebusiness, that's the uniformed
people next to a wrap truck.
Tom DuFore (06:31):
You talk a little bit about A-B testing.
Let's dive into that a littlebit.
Sahil Patel (06:35):
Let's talk about how most people, how many
companies, go about making awebsite Stage one.
It's called the prehistoricarea.
They just put some stuff on theweb and the CEO's nephew made
the website in his basementPrehistoric era.
(06:55):
We fast forward a little bit.
There's a little bit of whatpeople call best practice, but
in fact there's thinly disguisedanecdotes.
Someone said, oh, this workedfor me.
My last company or I read ablog that said you should do
this, or maybe, even worse, ourcompetitor's doing it, so why
don't we copy it?
By the way, none of these areterrible ideas, but they don't
(07:17):
actually tell you does anythingwork or not, and what this?
is like and where I'm leading to, is kind of modern website
which, if done well, uses A-Btesting data to make decisions.
So I'll give you the answer.
Now let's use an analogy.
You go to the doctor and shesays hey, tom, I've got this
medicine for your stomach pains.
(07:37):
And you said, oh okay, I'venever heard of it.
What is it?
And the doc goes oh, yeah, Iput this together at home.
You might say, well, has anyoneelse tried it?
My neighbor tried it.
It worked great for him.
Okay, like what?
Do they have the same symptoms?
Is he like is he old guy?
Is he a young guy, by the way?
(07:57):
Like how do you know I'mgetting the right dose?
Like is he my size?
Is he smaller?
I want to know something beforeI pop this thing in my mouth.
That is basically how a lot ofwebsites get made.
Yeah, I gave this medicine tomy neighbor, I conjured it up.
They didn't die.
It's good enough.
Now imagine the doctor saidwell, tom, we put this thing
(08:20):
through an FDA clinical trial.
Half the people got a placebo,half the people got the drug.
We made sure there was men andwomen, old people, young people,
healthy people, sick people inboth groups and we measured how
much better did the people thatgot the drug compare to the
people who got placebo.
And we did this a few differenttimes and, by the way, we did
it for like a couple of months.
(08:40):
We made sure we could, you know, make sure you didn't get
better and then, two weeks later, keel over and die.
Which medicine do you want tosign up to take?
Tom DuFore (08:49):
Well, when you put it that way, I think the answer
is pretty clear.
But that's what.
That's what.
Sahil Patel (08:53):
A-B testing is.
Let's take you have a homepage.
You're selling home services.
You got a franchise operationYou've got.
It's not the only way you getbusiness, but it's an important
way.
You've probably got thousandsof people a month coming to look
at your site, what you shoulddo.
And there's tons of software.
By the way, some of this isfree software.
You don't spend a lot of moneyon this.
You can set it up.
(09:14):
So half your audience, randomlyselected, will see the original
version of your homepage.
Half the audience will seesomething different.
Maybe it's a different message.
Maybe it's a different image.
Right, that image of theprofessional looking, your
professionals, your home, yourservice professionals in a
uniform.
They look incredible, they'vegot the truck, it's branded.
Use that image versus somethingelse.
(09:35):
Maybe you show social proof.
You show hey, we've got a fourand a half star rating on Yelp
and we've had 5,000 peoplereview us.
Social proof can be not always,but can be very powerful.
Half the people see thatversion, half the people see the
other version.
You run it long enough to makesure you get a representative
sample of data and then youmeasure the difference.
(09:55):
And if you do that once, by theway, you're already better off
than most companies, and if youreally want to do it, you do it
over and over and over to findwhat is the optimal version,
because if you haven't updatedyour website in four years,
almost anything will probably bebetter.
The answer is which of those isactually optimal and gets you
more.
That's A-B testing.
Tom DuFore (10:15):
From what I understand, as you've described
this, you can run some A-B testsand once you find a winner this
is kind of like one of these TVshows vote them off or on right
.
The remaining competitors stillhave to compete again, and then
again, and again, and again andagain.
This is kind of what it remindsme of.
Sahil Patel (10:32):
Not to mix our metaphors, but a great analogy
like that is think about, likethe NCAA basketball tournament,
march Madness that's a betterexample, we start with a bunch
of teams.
they face off.
The winner keeps going.
Now here's an interesting thing.
We love the Cinderella story,that number eight seed that
knocks off the number like twoseed.
(10:53):
But in reality most of the timewhat happens to the number
eight seed in the second round?
They lose.
They lose why the other team'sbetter.
Yeah, they got lucky.
And the beauty of sports ingeneral is that on any given day
, especially once you get tothings like a postseason
tournament, everyone's reallygood.
If you're just looking for thebest, everyone's really good.
So it's kind of the same thingas trying to A-B testing.
(11:14):
If you run a test and you onlyrun one test, the cost of being
wrong is very high.
If we crown the winner based onone game, you just don't know
were they lucky or were theygood?
Maybe the other team, someonewas injured or just some other
exogenous factor that's out ofcontrol.
But when you run a bracket, bythe time you get to the grade
eight, certainly by the time youget to the final four, you are
(11:37):
pretty confident.
You've got some of the bestteams in the country.
Every now and then someone willsneak in there, but certainly
over time you've got the bestteams.
Now, in the final game, is theteam that wins necessarily
statistically the best team?
It's a hard call, but what youknow is they had to defend their
(11:57):
win and they'd start over everygame in the bracket, just like
that A-B testing.
So the cost of being wrong goesway down if you continuously
test.
You run a test, you find awinner, you make that your new
control and you put somethingelse against it.
We call that the challenger andyou just keep challenging it.
And the best companies, in fact, may go through four homepages
in a year because every quarterthey're testing new homepages.
Tom DuFore (12:20):
That is very interesting.
Now, I would think, becausethis popped into my head.
As you said, four homepages ina year Sounds like a lot, sounds
outlandish, but not abnormal.
How do these changes impactcurrent customers that might be
coming back to buy new things orrevisit what you're doing?
Sahil Patel (12:44):
Yeah, so great question Are you giving a?
What I'm hearing is do you givedifferent experiences to your
existing customers versus yournew customers?
In marketing speak we call thatnew customer acquisition versus
land and expand or upsell.
So the first thing is I thinkyou got to kind of make sure you
know if you're starting withlike a homepage where kind of
everyone comes, you got todecide who you're for.
But what I've seen done well isthat you have multiple paths,
like on a website, and you mightjust ask people to identify are
(13:08):
you here for the first time orare you an existing or returning
customer?
And if they say yes, I'm areturning customer, then you
show them different content oryou take them to a different
place.
Hey, here's a page for ourreturning customers.
But it turns out just actuallyask.
There's a lot of kind of peoplethat, oh, we should try and
guess and we should try and know.
Most people are not offended ifyou ask them are you a
(13:29):
returning customer or not?
Especially if you put a littletag and says we're asking so we
can give you a tailoredexperience.
It's not intrusive.
Don't hit them with like sevenquestions when they first get
there.
But if you ask them that, Iwould say it's not unlike.
We'll go back to the restaurantanalogy Hi Tom, do you have a
reservation?
Today, when you walk into arestaurant, you're not offended,
they're not asking about allyour dietary preferences and if
(13:51):
you have allergies and if youwant carbonated water or still
water, they're just saying doyou have a reservation?
Because if you do, I'm going totake you right to your table
and if you don't, we'll talkabout how many people you need
to table for four or two.
Tom DuFore (14:06):
And what are you looking for today?
Maybe we can get you inCertainly Same thing on a
website.
You've done A-B testing on over130,000 sites and iterations of
this.
I would imagine, and you shareda couple of these are there a
few kind of best practices orthings that stick out, or maybe
one or two nuggets that you'vegleaned from that as a starting
point?
Sahil Patel (14:23):
Yeah, absolutely.
So.
Let's kind of start with kindof three things that I think
everyone at home listening tothis can use without spending a
lot of money or doing somethingvery elaborate or sophisticated.
And I mentioned one of themearlier, but we'll kind of go
into them.
One is show the product.
Show the product.
Show the product.
(14:43):
So it comes to your website,whether you're a service
business or a widget businesskind of show the product.
Okay, we'll expand on that.
That's number one.
Number two is start with agreat hook.
It can be a visual hook, it canbe a written hook.
Let's start with a great hook.
And number three is that theweb rewards skimmability.
(15:09):
Now, if we build landing pagesfor a living, we imagine
ourselves painting the ceilingof the Sistine Chapel and every
pixel is going to be perfect andit's put together with great
care.
But the reality is the averageperson might be reading it on
(15:29):
their phone.
They've got a kid that they'retrying to get to eat, they've
got their grocery list up inanother browser window and
they're texting with theirspouse.
They're in a highly distractedstate with many things competing
for their attention.
If you can get through to themin the simplest, easiest
possible way, you're going to bemuch better off.
(15:49):
They'll be much more likely tobuy Whatever buy means right.
If you're a service company,probably they're not pulling out
the credit card to spend sixfigures on some kind of service.
They might be just wanting tosay, hey, I'd like to talk to a
sales rep, get a quote.
If you're kind of more in thewidget business, maybe they're
buying there, and if you're inthe software business, certainly
they're not right.
Most people are going to dosome kind of free trial or talk
(16:12):
to a sales rep.
So those three things show theproduct.
Start with the hook, be easy toskim.
Let's back up.
Let's talk about what theseshow the product.
Let me ask get this.
Can you think of the last timeyou saw a car advertisement?
Can you picture that in yourhead and what was happening in
the ad?
Tom DuFore (16:28):
The car was driving on mountains, on a plateau or
something.
Yes, now take that same ad.
Sahil Patel (16:34):
Now subtract the car.
What would you be left with?
I'd be left with some beautifulscenery, maybe some great B-roll
footage, whether you have aservice business, you have a
widget business, you havesoftware like an intangible
product show the product, showthe product, show the product.
And a great way to do this.
I call this the one second test.
It's something everyonelistening can do with zero cost.
(16:56):
It's take your homepage on yourcomputer, open up your browser,
right click and choose GoogleTranslate.
So if you're running a Chromebrowser, it's built in.
Just choose a language thatnone of your friends speak, Just
like Arabic or Urdu or Hindi,Just something that's just your
friends are unlikely to speak.
(17:16):
I'm picking some languages thatare spoken in my home.
Google Translate and it'll turnevery piece of copywriting on
your homepage into a languagethat's non-recognizable.
And what it does is it forcesyour audience to rely on the
imagery.
And if you're a car ad, ifyou're selling a pickup truck,
it doesn't matter what languageit's in.
(17:36):
You're going to see pickuptruck and go pickup truck, Great
.
Okay, you may not know whatthey're saying, but you know
it's for a pickup truck and youknow the value prop of a pickup
truck, say, different from aluxury sedan.
Take your homepage, show it tofive people and just ask them
hey, what do you think thiscompany does.
Now, you're not looking forsomething specific, right?
(17:58):
They might not be able to tellyou that this is HVAC for
commercial high-rises, but theymight say something like oh,
this looks like some kind ofrepair business or this looks
like some kind of home serviceor something.
If you can do that, great.
If you haven't picked yourimagery carefully, you're going
to fail the test.
If you're using stock photos ofpeople sitting wearing a blazer
(18:21):
, crossing their arms in aconference room having fun,
First of all, where are allthese people?
What job do they work at?
That sitting in a conferenceroom is so much fun, Like all
this stock imagery is likethey're looking at a laptop.
Oh, my God, that's awesome.
I was like what are you doingat work?
I love my job, but I'm nothaving that much fun.
So the one second and it's aton of fun, because, because you
(18:42):
show it and people aresomething, you go okay,
something's wrong, Okay.
Number two start with a greathook, right, Landing page,
homepage, any kind of pages.
Your first job is not to getpeople to buy, and it's not even
to get people to understand whyyou're better than whatever
your competitor.
First job is just to get themto stop scrolling and it's
(19:06):
harder than it sounds.
Tom DuFore (19:08):
It's like you said that one second test If you
don't see what it is in almostan instant that you think this
webpage you're on is going to beable to solve your problem.
Whatever you're looking for,you're gone.
It's like out of there.
Sahil Patel (19:22):
Well, it's just even like, what is it?
Sometimes I go to thesewebsites and I'm like I don't
know what you do.
Like, because they have thesebroad aspirations, you know the
best AI powered solution formarketers?
Like, okay, that feels likehalf of the products under the
sun could fit.
Like it's just so big.
Now to give everyone listening,kind of something tangible here
I'll take, if I'm working witha customer, maybe even my own
(19:45):
homepage or landing page, I'lltake it.
I'll then go find threecompetitors they don't have to
be exact, just similar and I'llput them next to each other.
Okay, just like you know, takea little screenshot, put it in a
Word doc or a slide deck andthen just again show it to some
people and just ask them whichone of these jumps out at you.
(20:06):
And it's a wonderful test,because that is what many of
your potential customers, youraudience, are doing.
They'll have navigated.
Look, what do we all do?
We check out a couple things.
You go to a restaurant.
You look at three restaurants.
You're picking a hotel.
You probably look at a couplehotels.
You're looking for HVAC prepare.
You probably don't just buyfrom the first one, probably
look at a couple, look at threeor four competitors.
(20:29):
By the way, you don't have toprove that you're better, just
prove that you're different.
If all the HVAC repairs saywe're the cheapest, maybe your
thing is saying hey, we'll getsomeone to your house in the
first hour.
If all of them say we'll getsomeone to your house in the
first hour, maybe you should say, hey, we have the most
experience or we're the best atmultifamily units or something.
(20:50):
That's an example of a hook.
It doesn't have to be, you know, kind of madman era copywriting
.
Tom DuFore (20:57):
If you've been talking through this, give us a
little background on the company, what you guys do.
How can someone reach out toyou or the company if they're
interested in learning more?
Sahil Patel (21:11):
Well, thank you.
So the name of the company iscalled Spiralize spiralizecom.
We help companies optimizetheir websites.
Most of what we do is businessto business, b2b, using
marketing jargon, and about 30%of what we do is direct to
consumer brands.
And we have this unique thingwe crawl the internet to find
everyone else's AAB tests andthen we run.
Our customers get to run thebest ones and they only pay if
it gives them lift.
(21:32):
Lift here means a higherconversion rate.
If that sounds interesting,check out spiralizecom.
I'm also on LinkedIn.
I post four mornings a week,7.30 am Eastern, always in short
one-minute snippets, sometimesvideo, sometimes not Always
something kind of fun.
Try and sneak a little bit ofthe Eat your Veggies content
into kind of edutainment.
Tom DuFore (21:52):
Well, this is a great time in the show we make a
transition and we ask everyguest the same four questions
before they go.
The first question we ask haveyou had a miss or two on your
journey and something youlearned from it?
Sahil Patel (22:05):
Oh my God, I've had so many misses.
How much time you got.
So this is my second time beinga CEO, my first business, not
to say I don't have misses hereas well, but maybe second time
around At least I'm not makingthe same mistakes, I'm making
new mistakes.
On my first business, we raisedcapital outside company.
It was great for the firstcouple of years.
We raised capital outside thecompany.
It was great for the firstcouple of years.
(22:26):
It was a pure software businessand their expertise, the
investor, was really in servicebusinesses and the way you think
about deploying capital on apure service business very
different than a service or evena service hybrid, software,
service hybrid, which is whatSpiralize is.
And as a result, we got to apoint where they wanted to go
(22:46):
left and I wanted to go rightand it was super painful and it
cost us a bunch of growth.
We ended up finding an amicableparting and I bought them out
of their equity position.
Then we got the company back ontrack and I'd say I want to
give them credit because theyrecognized that we needed to
change them.
They actually came to me andsaid hey, we want to make you an
offer.
Why don't you buy our positionout, we'll do it in a way that
(23:09):
makes it kind of economicallyattractive for both sides.
So credit to them for kind offinding the high road, because
it was kind of both of us weweren't it wasn't like we
weren't at each other's throats,but just it wasn't working and
that was really really painfulthere during that time period it
was enormously stressful.
I thought I was going to losethe business.
It was a huge kind ofdistraction.
(23:31):
No one was happy.
It spilled over, like manythings you do this job as an
owner, operator, ceo it spilledover into my home life and I was
lucky that it didn't cost mekind of everything.
But it took a big toll on, youknow, my home life for sure.
And we ended up buying anacquire I shouldn't say finding
(23:51):
an acquirer.
An acquirer found us and we gotlucky and we'd kind of found a
path back to growth.
But you know, in the big schemeof you know I think, the
entrepreneur's dream, you havethis big exit, everyone's happy,
and there's kind of this greatfiscal outcome.
This one was in the so-so realm.
Now, on the other hand, thebusiness is part of a bigger
company now, kind of inperpetuity.
They're doing a good jobrunning it.
(24:12):
You know, permanent home forthe employees and the customers
and I'd been there for 10 years,I'd taken it as far as I could
take it, so in that sense it wasa good outcome.
On the other hand, you know, I'mworking for a living.
Now I'm not in the Caribbean,which is okay also, but I think
that's the sober reality is.
You know, for most people, ifyou get to an exit, it's not
(24:33):
always this big kind of home runevent.
You know the investors I thinkthey would definitely say it was
not a great financial returnfor them, and I think we should
all be.
You know, everyone likes tojust play the hits and I think
that creates this kind ofperception that, like everyone
else is killing it.
And me, as a owner operator,founder boy, I'm the only one
(24:55):
that's kind of struggling,trudging uphill.
So that's why I like to sharekind of just the unvarnished
reality of what happened there.
Tom DuFore (25:02):
Well, thanks for sharing the details and some of
the specifics on that.
And every success story hasfailures along the way and
missteps, or I should have goneleft instead of right at that
point in time, or whatever,right, you know, we all have
those moments.
Let's take a look at the flipside a make or a highlight or a
(25:23):
win.
Sahil Patel (25:23):
Here's how I would describe it.
I think one of the things Ilearned from it is, when you're
running a business, there'speaks and valleys and in reality
there's more valleys than peaks.
So one of the things I think,as a second time CEO, I learned
is to learn to live in thevalley.
Now you shouldn't be intent andcomplacent with learning, with
living in the valley.
You should kind of climb out,otherwise you don't have a
(25:47):
business.
But it was a tough lesson but avaluable lesson to learn.
It was like, hey, you gottaaccept that being in the valley
is part of being, it's part ofthe job.
You know, I worked in fast foodwhen I was in high school and
they used to.
I worked at Wendy's and theyused to tell us something
because you had to wear this hat.
No one liked to wear the hatand they said but you flip
burgers, wear the hat, that'swhat you want to be, a CEO, you
(26:07):
want to run it.
Whatever your title is owneroperator, ceo, franchise owner
you flip burgers, you're anowner operator.
You got to live in the valley.
That's part of it.
So certainly we've had atSpiralize.
We've had some nice successwith growth, profitability, with
delivering results for ourclients.
Not every day is a perfect day,but I think that's one of the
(26:31):
things I've learned is, youlearn to live in the valley and
you accept that.
Hey, that's part of the job,because if you don't, I think
you drive yourself nuts.
I think you're just signingyourself up for a lot of
unhappiness.
Tom DuFore (26:42):
Well, let's talk about a multiplier.
The name of the shows multiplyyour success.
You're in technology andmarketing and all of these
things that have multipliersbuilt in, so I'd love to find
out if you've used a multiplierto grow yourself, personally or
professionally, or organizationsyou've run.
Sahil Patel (26:59):
Yeah.
So I think there's three thingsthat have been multipliers.
I love the question, I love howyou framed it.
One is get professional therapyand get it before you need it.
Now, if you don't, I mean getit number one, but even better
is get it before you need it Now.
I learned that the hard way andI'm lucky because I'm married to
(27:21):
someone whose background is inclinical psychology.
My wife is trained as aclinical psychologist.
She works in public health now,so she's not seeing patients in
private practice.
But thankfully, when I was kindof at the lowest of lows she
recognized like hey, something'snot right, you need help.
And that was instrumental forme, also for our marriage, and
(27:41):
not everyone, but I'm not sayingthat but you can do that and
still end up in a place.
That's not great, but itcertainly made a difference and
I think it's true for mostpeople.
So I would say, and if you doget to the place where things
are good I'd say it's kind oflike working out, like you out,
you get in shape you shouldn'tstop because you're going to
(28:01):
probably fall back on bad habits.
You work out, get in shape, andthen you start eating junk food
and not running.
What's going to happen?
You end up in a bad place.
I think the same thing is truefor mental health and I think if
you get to a good place, youshould keep working.
You may want to change yourpattern or what type of therapy
you're doing, but you should doit.
That's number one.
Number two have a peer group ofpeople who are your real peers,
not your employees and also notpeople that control your
(28:23):
paycheck or your investors Realpeers, really helpful.
I have a CEO peer group.
We meet every two weeks.
It's great, it's a form oftherapy, but it's a different
thing.
Number two I'd say justtactfully for me I spend lot of
my time with customers, sales,and about three years ago and we
all do this thing that we'redoing right now, which is in the
model, we interact through zoomwindows.
(28:46):
Now I'm a big fan of in-personstuff.
I try to do as much in personbut still in in 90 of what I do
is through a, through a computerscreen.
So I hired a voice coach.
She's's incredible.
She actually I didn't know thiswhen I hired her, but she
actually works on the TV showthe Voice.
Now she's not on camera, butshe's one of the people behind
(29:07):
the scenes coaching thecontestants and she worked with
me on just on my presentation.
You know voice and pitch anddiction and speed and just
conveying emotion.
Really hard thing to do and Ithink those skills, whether
you're in you work on a job site, you work on Zoom, you work in
digital marketing, you work inHVAC repair we all communicate
and those skills it's just likeanything else.
(29:29):
If you're a musician, you wouldhire a coach to help you be a
better musician.
If you're a sing opera, youwould hire a professional person
to improve your voice.
If you're doing what we do,which is communicating with
clients, hiring someone to helpyou with how you communicate and
come across it was a bigmultiplier and I reached that
pretty late in my career.
(29:50):
I'm 47, so I was like maybe 42,43 when I did that.
Tom DuFore (29:54):
My regret is.
Sahil Patel (29:55):
I didn't do that sooner.
Tom DuFore (29:57):
Excellent, and the final question we ask every
guest is what does success meanto you?
Sahil Patel (30:03):
Look, I think that there's professional success and
personal success and I thinkthe thing I've learned from
doing this second time around isnot to attach one to the other,
Because you can have one, youcan sometimes have the other.
By the way, you could also haveneither of those and I don't
think you necessarily have tochoose between the other.
But I think there's differentways to keep score and you don't
(30:24):
Try not to conflate the two.
So for me, in my personal life,I'm lucky.
I've got a wonderful wife, twogreat kids, and keeping the
score there is very intangibleand I try not to connect that
with my bank account, which isvery intangible, and I try not
to connect that with my bankaccount, which is very tempting
to do, especially if you get toa point where you've had some
whether it's a modest ormoderate amount of success or a
(30:46):
lot.
But I'm lucky, I've had somesuccess professionally, so I try
to disconnect it from that, Ithink.
On the professional life, look,I have a duty to the
shareholders of our company togrow the company at a certain
pace, to have a certain amountof profitability and to be
delivering results for myclients, and I think between the
(31:06):
hours of the morning and whenwe stop.
Those are the three main thingsI think about.
There's a whole bunch of otherthings behind it, but I think
having clarity on that andthat's separate how I think
about my value as a person orwhat kind of husband I'm going
to be or what kind of dad I'mgoing to be to my kids.
I try to have some hobby.
I think having some hobbies andrelease valves.
(31:29):
They don't have to besophisticated.
I do a little bit of music onthe side just for fun.
I tried it the other way andit's really not a great way to
live.
I think many of us have beenlike well, if I just quit all my
hobbies, I don't do anythingelse and all I do is work.
The reality is there's aninfinite amount of work you can
do.
There's always an email you cananswer.
(31:49):
There's always a Slack messageyou need to respond to.
There's always a client thatwants your attention.
Tom DuFore (31:54):
You got to have those other things to make you
kind of your whole you and, aswe bring this to a close, is
there anything you were hopingto share or get across that you
haven't had a chance to yet?
Sahil Patel (32:05):
thank you for having me and, by the way, what
you do is so much harder thanwhat I do.
I get to come and talk aboutsome of my favorite things ab
testing and websites and, as ahost you have and I'm sure you
probably are might be doing oneof these after me.
You probably did one before meyou got to speak intelligently
about what your guests have.
That's really hard to do, soyou're really good at this.
For anyone who is in theespecially in the B2B marketing
(32:29):
space, and you care aboutwebsites, spiral Eyes.
We're actually holding our firstever conference next February
in Fort Lauderdale, so it's abeautiful location in winter
While the rest of the country isshivering.
We're going to be 76 degreesand sunny, it's near the beach
(32:49):
and it's going to be on allthings websites and it's going
to be hands-on, tactical nospeakers, no keynotes, no slide
decks, no one trying to pitchyou to buy their book.
It's going to be led by expertsin the field on all things
website.
So if that sounds interesting,you can Google it.
It's called Above the FoldSpiral Eyes Above the Fold.
I think you'll get somethingfrom it.
Tom DuFore (33:06):
Sahil, thank you so much for a fantastic interview
and let's go ahead and jump intotoday's three key takeaways.
So takeaway number one is whenhe talked about landing pages
and just defining that and Ithought it was great.
He made it simple.
It's anything where someonefinds you online, basically a
(33:27):
web property, and he said it'sdifferent from a social media or
social property and he saidthink of your landing page as
the front door to a restaurant.
Takeaway number two is hetalked about how A-B testing
impacts your customer experienceand he said there's multiple
paths that your customers cantake and he talked about a
(33:49):
current customer or returningcustomer versus a prospective
customer and I like the analogywhen he said when there are
buttons that say returningcustomers, click here.
And he said compare that to arestaurant asking do you have a
reservation today.
I thought that was a greatcomparison to really help
understand that.
Takeaway number three is when hegave the three things to do or
(34:12):
that you can do to improve yourlanding page and conversions.
I thought it was great.
He said number one show theproduct.
Show the product, show to theproduct.
I thought it was great.
He said number one show theproduct, show the product, show
to the product.
I thought that was great.
Show the product, show theproduct.
Show the product.
Number two he said start with agreat hook or a great visual or
a written hook, and he said usethe one second test.
And he said, as an example,convert the language on your
(34:36):
website to some foreign languageyou don't understand.
Take a screenshot and askseveral people you know to do a
one-second test and ask do youknow what this website does or
what this company does?
I thought that was great.
The third idea or strategy hetalked about is the idea about
skim ability and how easy is itto skim the website?
(34:58):
And he said the average personis reading on their phone.
Is it to skim the website?
And he said the average personis reading on their phone is
likely to be highly distracted.
So is it easy to skim, to walkthrough and to see that?
So I thought that was a greatexample.
And now it's time for today'swin win.
So today's win win really comesfrom the entire episode.
(35:19):
It's pretty simple to me, it'screate a great landing page that
makes it easy for your customeror prospective customer to
understand what you do and thentest it.
So I thought that was just agreat takeaway that I took out
of this and I think, if you cando this, it's going to be a win
for your customer that I tookout of this and I think, if you
(35:40):
can do this, it's going to be awin for your customer.
It's going to be a win for yourcompany and a win for everyone
involved.
And so that's the episode today.
Folks, please make sure yousubscribe to the podcast and
give us a review, and rememberif you or anyone you know might
be ready to franchise theirbusiness or take their franchise
company to the next level,please connect with us on our
website, bigskyfranchiseteamcom,where you can schedule your
free, no obligation consultationto assess and help understand
(36:05):
what your needs might be.
Thanks for tuning in and welook forward to having you back
next week.
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