"By listening to your customers, you’ll better understand how to serve them" with Rob Bellenfant
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Rob Bellenfant is a serial entrepreneur and investor - he has created dozens of businesses over the past twenty years including TechnologyAdvice. Rob has a competitive spirit and constantly pushes everyone he works with to achieve their goals. Rob calls Nashville, TN his home along with his lovely wife and four children. In his free time, Rob enjoys real estate investing, angel investing, traveling, learning about personal finance, and spending time with family and friends.
Can you tell our readers about your background?
I never listened to adults when they said “Don’t talk to strangers,” so as a kid I was perfectly happy going door to door, selling arts and crafts, selling lemonade or cookies, and raising money for Scouts. When I was 8 years old, I saw that a lawn care company was charging $35 to mow lawns, and although I was too young to push a mower, I knew I could compete. I started Weed Pickers Plus, which was my first business. I pulled weeds and planted flowers for 3 clients: my parents, our neighbors, and a family friend. Then at age 12, I started cold calling businesses with two of my friends and designing brochure websites for them on Microsoft Frontpage. That led to us investing in a server starting our own hosting business, so we could get some recurring revenue. In the process of learning how to secure and manage our servers, we learned a lot that we then turned around and started to offer as a hosting management service, when I was 15 years old. In our freshman year of college, my business partner bought out my stake in the company, and I started buying companies on eBay.Ad-Site Advertising—which eventually turned into Thrive Marketing and then into TechnologyAdvice—is the only one of those businesses that survived.
What inspired you to start your business?
Six weeks after purchasing the Ad-Site Advertising business—which brokered web ads for customers—the only supplier of ad space we had for all of our clients went out of business. I
thought that maybe I had bought a fifth company off of eBay that was going to fail. But after settling with the seller and looking at the assets I had leftover, I realized I had a good customer list I could work from. I started reaching out to those clients directly to see how I could help them, and eventually, we were able to start brokering ad space for them. The drive to succeed and continue through the adversity sounds so heroic when you put it like that. At the time I wanted to salvage this business deal and recoup my investment. I also enjoyed the challenge of finding ways we could help these clients. By 2014, the company fully pivoted to the software marketing space as TechnologyAdvice, a B2B lead generation company and unbiased source of information for buyers looking for their next business software.
Where is your business based?
We have offices in Nashville TN and Louisville KY.
How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?
When I was a freshman at UT Knoxville in 2006 I purchased 5 companies off of eBay, including Ad-Site-Advertising, an online advertising company (later to become TechnologyAdvice). Something special about this company is we have accepted no money from outside investors and have been self-sustaining since its inception.
What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?
We’re establishing more significant and long-lasting client relationships, delivering more leads, and hiring faster than we ever have. We’re more efficient, more willing to try new things, and we’re pushing our goals every day. In the past year, we’ve changed offices to accommodate our growth, and we have plans to further expand our footprint in the near future. We’ve made 21 new hires in the last year, promoted 6 current employees, and will achieve 17 percent revenue growth over 2018’s revenue.
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
Over the last 14 years, we’ve experienced varying periods of growth and contraction. When our growth was ill-advised or based on untested product offerings, we made conscious decisions to shrink our footprint and refocus on our core offerings, values, and mission. One of the most impactful of these lessons was a false-start launch of a new product offering. In concept, the product would have been revolutionary in our space. We spent thousands of hours in development resources and significant financial resources to build a viable version of the product. Ultimately, it failed to generate the same excitement for buyers as it had for us. The pivot away from a new-but-poorly-received-product and back to our core offering forced us to make some hard decisions. We had to downsize resources and refocus our efforts on sustaining the core business. Those hard lessons ultimately reminded us that our core values and mission should drive strategy. More broadly, we have fought diligently to gain brand recognition as a trusted partner in a crowded space. There are hundreds of providers fighting over a limited share of wallet. We have managed to grow our brand awareness and market share, even as the competition in the space grew. We know that commitment to customer satisfaction, the quality of our product, and the caliber of our employees drive our growth.
How do you stay focused?
I am the most focused when I have a quiet place to work. Whether I am working in the office or at home, it is always important to find a private room where I have limited distractions. Whenever I hit a roadblock or a problem with the business arises, I find that if I give my brain a break by doing something unrelated to work, it clarifies my thinking and often gives a breakthrough on my problem.
How do you differentiate your business from the competition?
There are two major qualities of TechnologyAdvice that makes us stand out from our competitors:
Transparency: Companies that consistently work on showing their work—even when it’s not as pretty as we’d like—build trust. Do you make your processes clear to customers? Do you come to them first when you’ve made a mistake so you can make it right, or do you try to hide your mistake and pretend like it never happened? When companies try to cover their tracks so they don’t look bad to one customer, they tend to set an internal precedent that failure won’t be tolerated and should be avoided at all costs. But if you’re transparent with customers and with your employees, you can build a culture of failing forward.
Dedication to quality: in a service industry like ours, that means not signing the deal if we can’t deliver the quality that they expect. If we get into a meeting with a customer and they have needs that we know we’re not going to be able to deliver on, we’ll pass the deal up. We’ll even refer them to a partner that we know can do it better than we can. We do this because we want to provide value and quality to our customers—anything short of that won’t fly. And we know that by sticking to that, the customers will come to us when they have projects we can help them with.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
One of our best marketing strategies has been using conversion chatbots and cold cadence videos. Through the use of these two strategies, we’ve been able to support sales and increase our pipeline. Our win-back cadence of reaching out to previously lost opportunities to reignite conversation also influenced a significant increase in pipeline creation.
What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Listen to the customer. So many customers are out there begging to tell companies what they need. By listening to your customers, you’ll better understand how to serve them. Most products on the market are really just services. If you can parse what customers tell you they need, then you’re steps ahead of the competition.
What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?
I don’t really have a favorite blog but I do love using the LinkedIn app so I can network and learn on the go. My favorite book of all time is Robert Koyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad because it teaches people about the benefits of delayed gratification and how to value assets over liabilities.
What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?
My favorite business tool is Slack. This application has been pivotal in keeping our team connected both in-office and when working remotely. We utilize the channels feature for timely company announcements and common passions such as the #PatchPics channel for anyone to share pictures of their favorite pets. We also turn to Slack for employee recognition in partnership with Assembly. It’s a great way to send appreciation to your coworkers and celebrate wins, both big and small.
Who is your business role model? Why?
I don’t just have one role model but one of my mentors is Henry Schuck who is the founder and CEO of Zoominfo. There is a lot to admire about Henry but the single biggest thing I respect about him is that he’s a lifelong learner. Even with a wildly successful business, the guy hustles every day to continue to grow and improve!
How do you balance work and life?
My employee’s joke that my hobby is business, which may or may not be true. But I make time for myself and my family, which really keeps me grounded.
What’s your favorite way to decompress?
I like to give my brain a little break by playing with my kids or working out or doing something creative.
What do you have planned for the next six months?
TechnologyAdvice saw exponential growth in 2020, adding over 90 employees to the team, and will continue this progression in 2021. We will be adding unique service offerings to our stack as we continue to help B2B marketers create demand and drive revenue for their technology companies.
How can our readers connect with you?
Reach out to me on LinkedIn or follow the TechnologyAdvice Demand Gen Insights page.