This week on the Scale Academy Podcast Darica Diers, Founder and CEO of Motidash, joins Ned Arick and Hilmon Sorey to explain how the idea for Motidash was born, her go-to-market strategy, and how she is scaling her business. 

The Genesis

Darica starts by explaining that Motidash stands for ‘motivational dashboard,’ and the idea came about during the course of Darica’s sales career. She realized that the level of motivation becomes so much more intense when you have a longer sales cycle and the rewards are few and far between. But Darica found that gamification can make sales so much more rewarding and help motivate salespeople during long sales cycles through instant gratification. However, she was unable to find anything to help keep her really motivated, and although she was very successful, she was unhappy. This is what led Darica to take the leap of faith and start Motidash. Continue listening at 01:08 to learn more about the genesis of Motidash.

It’s Not All About the Money

In most cases, salespeople’s minds are built to want to take more risks. And although they may be making a nice base salary, they may still be unhappy. This is where Motidash comes in- to keep them engaged and get them excited about their job because it’s not all about the money. Listen at 05:43 to learn more.

Know Your Target Audience

Darica did a lot of her sales work in the health care field selling health care software. She felt there was a need in the medical billing space to gamify the tedious tasks that the billers handled on a daily basis. However, someone mentioned to her that medical billers were not going to be intrigued by her software, and Darica realized that she just doesn’t know medical billers and what makes them tick. This, in turn, caused her to realize that she does know salespeople’s minds, and so she shifted the focus of Motidash to salespeople. It is so important for entrepreneurs to understand their target in order to be successful. Listen at 07:29 to find out more.

Bridging the Gap

Part of Darica’s plan with Motidash is to help companies hire and retain more employees by bridging the gap between the salesperson’s need for instant gratification in the sales process and the company’s need for employees that are willing to take on the bigger deals with the longer sales cycles that do not offer that instant gratification. Motidash helps makes the job more applicable to people that need that constant dopamine hit. Listen at 11:57 to learn more.

The Impact

In the first nine months of using Motidash, one of Darica’s clients sold more than they had sold in the entire previous year without the software. Darica goes on to explain that within a company it is typically only about 30% of the team that really grasp the concept of Motidash and use it to its full potential. Darica’s goal is to target the middle performers and push them into the top-performing category. Find out more at 13:20.

Go-to-Market

Darica thought about making Motidash available in tiers and to individual salespeople, but what she found is that what really drives it is accountability, so she decided not to target individual salespeople. Instead, she decided to really focus on selling to the VPs of Sales and having them take it up the line. Learn more at 17:00.

Painting the Picture

Darica spends time in consultations and interviews trying to get a sense of what the high-impact activities are that drive the salespeople within a particular company that she wants to try to replicate. For example, the high impact activity is not necessarily selling the product; it is all the questions that they’re asking in order to get the meeting, etc. So then Darica would incentivize asking those discovery questions or getting referrals, or whatever activity gets them to the deal. At this point it becomes education because you are letting the salespeople know what they need to do, how to do, and then you are measuring their progress with Motidash. Listen at 18:11 to learn more about how the product works and examples of games that are involved. 

A Solo Operation

Darica found that she was spending far too much time helping the small sales team that she had, so she decided to just do all the outreach and selling herself. She does, however, hold the sales teams that she works with accountable to using the software appropriately and meeting their goals. She considers herself the overarching project manager in these relationships because it is so important to have a good system and structure in place to oversee the project. Learn more at 23:25.

Motivating Rewards

Darica lets the sales team choose their reward and she has seen a wide range of requests- Air BnB gift cards, having an extra day off one week, a limo and dinner. Darica likes to incentivize with experiences because the immediate reward is more valuable to most people than the compensation that happens in the future. 

While using such a reward system is almost like feeding the beast because people are just going to keep wanting more rewards, it is necessary because if salespeople become too bored they are unhappy. They are not being stimulated. They need those little hits of dopamine that come from these rewards to remain content. Continue listening at 25:08 to find out more.

Using Motidash as a Founder

Darica explains that the most important thing you can do as a founder is to evaluate what your priorities are and make sure you are spending time on sales and revenue-generating activities. Talk to prospects, try to grow the business. Make the very best use of your time. Founders can use Motidash to prioritize and gamify the most important things that they need to focus on. Continue listening at 32:02 to find out other ways new founders can use Motidash.

Darica can be reached at www.motidash.com and would love to start working with more startup founders.

Key Snippets

01:08 The Genesis

05:43 It’s Not All About the Money

07:29 Know Your Target Audience

11:57 Bridging the Gap

13:20 The Impact

17:00 Go-to-Market

18:11 Painting the Picture

23:25 A Solo Operation

25:08 Motivating Rewards

32:02 Using Motidash as a Founder