20 Jul July 23, 2019 – Digital Marketing Daniel Ben Shitrit and It’s Not Mommy & Daddy’s Business w Mark Deo
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Daniel Ben Shitrit – CEO & CXO of RBD – a Digital Marketing Agency – Read interview highlights here
All you need is that one 10 to 15 minute window everyday for marketing, which will boost you up. The way to become better in sales is the same as everything else you do in life, you have to get your hands dirty. Try to sell as much as you can and work as hard as you can. My rule in sales is understand who you’re talking to, understand their needs, and then provide them with whatever they need.
Daniel Ben Shitrit started at the age of 14. He had joined the workforce and shortly realized that he was motivated to learn the details of every field he entered.
- Daniel landed his first managerial position at the age of 16.
- He drafted into the Israel Defense Forces as a combat soldier but still continued to work.
- Daniel landed the position of Head of Sales at an International Financial Firm at 22.
- He became a Co-Founder of EntiesMall LTD, an innovative e-commerce platform with unique features at 23.
Daniel is an experienced sales, marketing, and startup enthusiast and in his off time, he loves gaming and watching movies.
Mark Deo – Organizational Psychologist and Author of It’s Not Mommy and Daddy’s Business Anymore: How family member behavior can ensure family business success
We tend to be blind to our own dysfunctions. We don’t want to look in the mirror.
Dr. Mark Deo is an Organizational Psychologist. Mark worked directly with senior-level family business leaders to help them profitably grow their businesses. He has worked in nearly every industry sector, but his focus is on leadership development, fostering behavioral change and shifting company cultures. A leading advocate of family business, he has appeared on FOX television and his articles have been published by Business Week, Entrepreneur, Fortune, CNN/Money and numerous other publications. Mark hosted the CBS radio show, “The Small Business Hour” and in 2003 was voted “Journalist of the Year” by the Small Business Administration. In early 2019, Mark received his Ph.D. from ASU.
Highlights from Daniel’s Interview
From a very young age, I always turned to my friends and said that I wanted to start selling sandwiches or start having small businesses in the beach selling cold drinks. You can say I always wanted to be an entrepreneur.
As soon as I left the army, I realized that I wanted to do something that would make an impact. So I started working right away in businesses, and trying to climb to the highest positions that I’m able to, and learn as fast as I can, as much as I can. I started building the first business, which was the ecommerce platform that we did at around 22. By 23 it was completely built. After that we started meeting up with some companies to bring them on the platform. Eventually we realized that our platform is pretty unique. And from there on, we started talking to even bigger companies that wanted to maybe acquire the platform or have some sort of partnership.
It’s pretty unique process, my first business, that I created with that ecommerce platform. We created a feature inside the platform that I can’t really go into too many details about, because it’s still sensitive information. But we created a couple of features. I can say one of them is a feature that was able to allow the customers to sell products in the platform itself, to upload bulk amounts of products, around 10,000 to 15,000 products in seconds, not minutes in the platform. All they need is an Excel sheet or some sort of document, and the platform will automatically convert it to actual products in the platform.
The whole idea starts from… It was a car, we were three partners, and what bothered us when we sat down one day, we said it’s bothersome that there are so many scam websites out there. It’s so hard to find the right ecommerce platform besides Amazon and eBay. We wanted to create a platform that gives you the feeling that you can trust that platform, also, the concept was in the beginning to create a platform that only big brands are on, so you can trust it. But from there on, we started developing a very innovative application-looking ecommerce platform, that’s what we thought would be the big deal at first. And when we started meeting up with companies, they mentioned that idea, and that problem that they had with the bulk upload. And fortunately for us, we are talented enough developers that we were able to create that feature for them. And from there on, we just skyrocketed to attention.
We reached out to these companies directly. First we were in Israel. We started reaching out to these companies. And the more we met up with them, the more people talked to us, and introduced us to our connections. And these connections introduced us to other connections and big companies. That’s pretty much how we grow.
It was sleepless nights and very long days. We worked 20 hours a day, easily, as partners. And a lot of this was when we all had regular day jobs. It was very intense, and we did a lot of phone calls every day until someone was willing to listen. I used “smoke breaks” to work on my business. This is the way you climb; people don’t understand it. All you need is that one 10, 15 minute window every day that could boost you up. It’s an effort that you need to do every day, but eventually will be worth it.
There are our processes. When we talked to companies, we realized that the way that we develop the company and the website was very user friendly. Companies really liked the way we developed the website. So I figured after that, we might as well while we were still in contact and still working on the ecommerce platform. We figured that we might as well open a digital marketing agency that provides solutions for big companies. We thought, what we did, why not let everyone have it? So we decided to build that agency, create websites for businesses, help them innovate, and be impressed as well. I mean, we also work with startups. We always tell them that our interest is for them to get purchase in the end, because that’s what every startup wants to do. So we help them be innovative. That’s what are we trying to do. We’re trying to spread our knowledge and help as many people as we can.
Of course, I’m not trying to get everything under my responsibility. Part of being able to run multiple businesses successfully, even though we are focusing right now solely on digital marketing agencies. But you cannot do that without having good partners that could take off some of the stress and the work.
It’s very hard to find people that will be very attached to your business idea and will want to climb with you when they’re not partners, especially when the business is not yet open to the outside world, like the ecommerce platform. In that case, it was mainly the partners, our four partners in that ecommerce platform. But that digital marketing agency that we have we built out of two partners, but in this area we can have, and we have, multiple people working with us.
I am pretty proud that our customers are very pleased with our customer support and customer service. Part of it’s very important, especially these days, when you have so many big companies with customer services that are inhuman or very robotic; a lot of big companies switch their customer support to AI programs. I can say what our customers like the most is the idea that we are very friendly, very intimate with them. We go in, we listen to the entire story of their company, we build the brand based on what they believe in, and what they want the brand to grow, not just what they need or the specific website or the specific campaign, to learn what the customer wants, what he wants from his business, and then act accordingly.
We always try to reply to our customers as soon as possible. We always try to be available all the time, around seven days a week. We try and be available as much as we can. But I’d say a quick swift response explaining something that we elaborate in detail for every question that the clients have. I just give the short, quick answer. What we do, we try to be as quick and as efficient as possible with every client and make sure that he understands the process.
I was fortunate enough, I was successful enough on the employment area that I was able to save enough money to start the businesses. Most of the money that went towards the commerce platform came from my own pocket. Regarding digital marketing agency, I am skilled in sales, and it was my former occupation. So I believed in the idea that you are able to build your own financial stability using sales without using money or any investment or any marketing. If you sell good enough, you’re able to pretty much get money from nothing.
I mean, I don’t really know if salesmanship’s in my DNA. I always had a way of talking to people and understanding them pretty much. But you can say that the way to become better in sales and good in sales is the same as everything in life, you gotta have experience, you gotta go through it, you gotta get your hands dirty, try to sell as much as you can, and work as much as you can on it, so you can get better at that. You have to get your hands dirty, you have to get your hands in the mud, you have to gain experience the same way as everything in life. The more you practice it, the better you will become. When I started being a salesman I was horrible, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was pretty much checking the water. But sooner or later, after two or three months’ time, I realized that I’m selling very good compared to the rest of the salespeople. And the more experience you get, the better you become. So I say that what makes me so much better than what I was at the beginning was willpower.
My rule in sales is rapport, is knowing you’re talking to a human being, I believe that understanding who you’re talking to over the phone, or even if it’s face to face, it’s more important first to understand you’re talking to understand their needs, and then provide them whatever. I do not believe in the old methods of pushing hard or trying to talk over the other person or trying to talk with a radio voice. It’s gonna be wrong for marketing and commercial. These are great tools. Regarding sales funnel, you know, I do believe that people like a great voice anyway. But more important is to be personal and be authentic.
You can always go to our website, https://www.rbdwebdev.com. You can always check it out. Check us out in the social media platform as well. We’re always updating ourselves in social media. We’re very active. So we’d love you to come by. The comments would share some thoughts. We always follow up, and we’d love to come here next year and talk about more.