Matt Fok came up with his idea for eZ-Xpo, before the pandemic. He thought, what if you could continue the dialogue started at conferences virtually? Since his company was already selling an eLearning platform, he simply went to his existing customers to validate the idea. 

And then the pandemic hit. 

His founder-led sales approach paid off as he uncovered more and better ways to address the market need. By providing content and ongoing interactions between companies and their prospects, the platform could be used to build communities. eZ-Xpo provides the middle of the funnel nurture interactions virtually. 

Rather than hire a sales force, Matt has employed two sales strategies. He has hired and trained a team of 20 Digital Collaborator Champions to guide customers through the setup and management process. Each champion specializes in a niche such as fintech or blockchain.

And instead of trying to clone himself, he runs boot camps to teach customers what he has learned about creating successful implementations.

An unexpected consequence of his approach is improved SEO as a byproduct of the enhanced content and interaction on his customer’s websites.

“The lack of in person events taught us that we needed a way to maintain interactions started at in person events!”

Join us to learn more about how quickly Matt scaled eZ-Xpo with his sales model. 

Highlights:

2:13 We help companies get more organic traffic and leads by leveraging hybrid events, both in-person and virtual and on demand not just for lead generation, but actually for ongoing engagement.

3:26 One of the big challenges or huge untapped opportunities for companies is to leverage the same platform to do in-person events or hybrid events.

5:31 We started thinking that there is a better way to get virtual traffic. We actually started the virtual trade show before the pandemic.

6:33 Sales is about educating your clients about new ways to do business.

6:59 You bring the leads at a trade show but then you have to nurture. Instead of spamming them with promotional material, have a virtual summit with subject matter experts to show the benefits of your approach to solving their problem.

8:27 Bring people back for more content boosts your SEO ranking for free.

9:10 After our initial sales focus of promoting SEO benefits to existing customers we reached out to channel partners. The platform itself is really good at creating a partner ecosystem network.

12:19 Our first target audiences were communities like associations that have captive audiences like the Chamber of Commerce. They don't have a solution to connect all the local chapters.

14:22 We do some outbound marketing through social media and, SEO, but of our lead generation comes through channel partners. 

15:26 Instead of growing a sales force, we rely on 20 Digital Collaborative Champions. They specialize in verticals such as fintech or blockchain and work directly with channel partners to design the community programs.

19:00 Instead of looking for new customers, focus on expanding your offer to existing customers.

21:30 Instead of cloning myself to get out of the founder-led sales role, we created digital bootcamps to pass all of my knowledge to potential customers.

22:38 Any B2B company with a channel partner ecosystem can take advantage of this platform to enhance the front end experience versus focusing just on backend API integrations.

27:48 Companies and communities are looking for thought leadership in order to think outside the box.

29:47 A company that brings a community along with their solution will have a major competitive advantage over their competitors.

32:21 Hybrid events or in-person events is like e-commerce. Remember 20 years ago asking should we just have a brick and mortar company or just e-commerce? The short answer is both. We need both h