[Top Agency Series] Effective B2B Marketing Strategies With Shaheem Alam of FiveRings Marketing

Shaheem Alam is the Co-founder and CEO of FiveRings Marketing, a full-service agency helping B2B companies in the US create repeatable, scalable, and predictable sales and marketing strategies to grow more revenue. He started his entrepreneurial journey at 20, with his first venture showing him incredible highs and crushing lows. 

Before FiveRings Marketing, Shaheem was in sales, doing door-to-door sales and growing massive sales teams. He has also been a member of TEC Canada, an account executive at RenoRun Inc., a direct sales executive at Eco Energy Home Services Inc., and founded Triton Marketing LLC.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [03:01] Shaheem Alam talks about FiveRings Marketing
• [06:11] The experience and seven steps of door-to-door sales
• [13:02] Shaheem discusses the sales process and mindset for cold calling
• [15:18] FiveRings Marketing’s culture and hiring process
• [20:00] The evolution of FiveRings Marketing’s services
• [27:35] FiveRings Marketing’s niche and pricing model 
• [30:15] Shaheem’s advice for people working with family members 
• [35:38] The value of having standard operating procedures in place
• [37:57] FiveRings Marketing’s customer success stories 
• [39:50] Common LinkedIn and email outreach mistakes and how to overcome them

In this episode…

As a B2B company, generating revenue is a top priority. However, creating repeatable, scalable, and predictable sales and marketing strategies to consistently achieve this can be challenging. 

With so many channels to choose from, including LinkedIn sales outreach, cold calling, email outreach, inbound marketing, paid media, content marketing, and many more, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Marketing expert Shaheem Alam recommends working with an agency with the expertise to execute these strategies effectively. They can help you create a personalized sales and marketing strategy tailored to your business needs.

Listen to this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast with Dr. Jeremy Weisz as he speaks with the Co-founder and CEO of FiveRings Marketing, Shaheem Alam. They discuss FiveRings Marketing’s services, the seven steps for door-to-door sales, the sales process and mindset for cold calling, and how to overcome common LinkedIn and email outreach mistakes.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Shaheem Alam on LinkedIn
• FiveRings Marketing
• FiveRings Academy 
• Nilofar Nikju on LinkedIn
• Overview

Special Mention(s):

• Second Bite Podcast 

Related episode(s):

• “Building a Great Team and More Helpful Insights with Jason Swenk Host of The Smart Agency Master Class Podcast” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Growth Through Acquisitions – What is Your KPI and Northstar? With Jason Swenk” on the Inspired Insider Podcast 
• “[Top Agency Series] Most Valuable Advice When Selling Your Agency With Todd Taskey of Potomac Business Capital” on the Inspired Insider Podcast 
• “[Top Agency Series] Navigating a Merger and Becoming an End-to-End Digital Partner With Kevin Hourigan of Spinutech” on the Inspired Insider Podcast 
• “[Sweet Process Series] How to Save Hundreds of Hours a Month Using Top Productivity Tools with Adi Klevit of Business Success Consulting Group” on the Inspired Insider Podcast 
• “[Top Black Business Leaders Series] Insource: How to Increase Efficiency with Existing Staff and Rapidly Onboard New Staff with Owen McGab Enaohwo of SweetProcess” on the Inspired Insider Podcast 

Quotable Moments:  

• “Culture is the most important thing in a company.”
• “Take forever to hire people and fire fast.”
• “Companies want to keep their salespeople close.”
• “Be honest when cold calling.”
• “For any successful relationship, you need to be able to put your ego aside.”
• “As long as you’re brilliant with the basics, your business is going to be successful.”

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:01 

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 0:22 

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder of inspiredinsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today is no different. I have Shaheem Alam of fiveringsmarketing.com and Shaheem before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes people should check out of the podcast. Since as part of the top agency series, I’ve had some interesting ones. One I had to actually with Jason Swenk. Jason Swenk built his agency up to eight figures and sold it and then he actually been buying up agencies. He also has a great podcast and a group for agency owners, his podcast is a smart agency masterclass. Another good one was Todd Taskey. Taskey, has a Second Bite Podcast, he actually helps pair agencies with private equity. And he finds sometimes they make more on the second bite when the private equity sells again than they do on the first. So he talks about valuations, the agency landscape and everything under the sun as far as that goes. And Kevin Hourigan of Spinutech also Shaheem, he has been running the agency since 1995. So it was interesting to see the different periods of time and the evolution there. That was a really good one as well. So check it out. More on inspiredinsider.com. And this episode is brought to you by Rise25. Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream 100 relationships. And how do we do that we actually help you run your podcast, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the accountability, the strategy and the full execution of the podcast and Shaheem, we call ourselves kind of the magic elves that work in the background and make it look easy for the host in the company so they can create great content and create great relationships. And let us handle everything else. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way over the past decade to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you thought about podcasting, you should if you have questions, you can go to rise25.com to learn more. And I’m excited to introduce today’s guest Shaheem Alam. He’s co-founder and CEO of FiveRings Marketing, they help B2B companies get leads. He started in the grind of door-to-door sales many years ago, and then Built FiveRings. He’s built FiveRings to over 40 people over the past four years. And we’re going to talk about what he did. So Shaheem, thanks for joining me.

Shaheem Alam 2:54 

Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

Jeremy Weisz 2:56 

So first of all, just talk about FiveRings Marketing and what you do.

Shaheem Alam 3:01 

Yeah, for sure. So, as a company, we’re a full-service agency, we help b2b companies with their top-of-funnel leads. And that can be through outbound sales through inbound marketing, ads, SEO, cold calling kind of all of the above. And really like, our sweet spot is when there are companies that either are struggling to figure this out themselves, they have salespeople that can close deals, but it’s the pipeline that needs to be fed, and they’re unable to kind of build that internally, or it costs too much to build it internally. Or they’ve just had a bad experience with like bad hires, sales, development reps and things like that to do this. Or they have a, it’s already functioning and it’s all working, all their channels are humming, but they want to test out new channels, test out different approaches. And so that’s what they hire us as well to just help scale that further. So but we’re all about top-of-funnel lead generation.

Jeremy Weisz 3:56 

How did you get into this? What was the thought when you first started the company?

Shaheem Alam 4:03 

Yeah, so it’s actually So myself and my wife, we co-founded the company, and well, technically, she founded it. So it existed as a side hustle for her two years before I was like, even at the picture. And then, at one point, she was kind of switching, like thinking about switching careers. And she was getting offers to be like an account executive at a ton of different startups. And one of her friends was very, very successful. Told her, why don’t you just start a company and help all of them and it was like this thing, lightbulb moment. She was wanting to start a company and so at that, and then we basically partnered on it from there, she had some experience doing LinkedIn outreach. I had some experience with cold emailing cold calling. We both did stuff like that. So we started it. I mean, yeah, that’s how it started, I guess and then we figured it out along the way.

Jeremy Weisz 4:58 

So what were you doing at the time?

Shaheem Alam 5:01 

So at that time, I guess she really like helped me out with that I would say at that point I was also in a transition period where I had you mentioned door to door. I had been in that industry was HVAC selling like furnaces ACs water filters for a while. And over the years that industry like it just became, really, and it like, I was at a time where nothing was working, I wasn’t selling, I wasn’t able to build sales teams like there’s different companies I was contracted with and my commissions weren’t getting paid. And it was just like, I had spent all the money I ever earned. I was in a lot of debt, I was pretty much bankrupt. And I had to just leave that industry and go after something else. So I was looking for a job. And so in that time period, we like partnered on this she went full-time on it, I still got a job as an account executive at a startup called Reno Run. And I worked on firings part-time, she was full-time for the first year until the company could pay me and then I went full-time as well.

Jeremy Weisz 6:05 

Talk about maybe a day in the life of door-to-door for a second.

Shaheem Alam 6:11 

Yeah, as a rep. You start so they’re long days. But you start, you come to the office around I think it was like nine-ish. And you started doing pitch practice. You’ll have a ton of agents in the office think of like, Wolf of Wall Street or boiler-room type stuff, lots of agents, fish practice happening at 10.

Jeremy Weisz 6:30 

What happens at pitch practice, like what do you?

Shaheem Alam 6:34 

You pair up with somebody and you pitch, they give you a bit of feedback, they pitch you give you feedback, you switch, you find someone else, and then just chit chat hanging out drinking your coffee starting your day?

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