How do you grow a business during unprecedented times? For Johan Colvig of MoreReporting the answer has always been the same: you solve one problem and move onto the next.
Johan Colvig, Co-Founder of MoreReporting, joins Freddy Shelton of The Fifth Marketing on this episode of The First 100 to discuss creating a product story, marketing tips, and why agility should be your strategy for growth.
As a native of Denmark, Johan studied physics and IT development from the University of Copenhagen. After university, he continued to advance his career in IT development throughout the early 2000’s. In 2008, he co-founded Infotrust, a business intelligence (BI) implementation partner for SAP. During his tenure at Infotrust, he managed an expansion of operations into the Baltic region of Europe and was awarded SAP partner of the year.
After a few years, the Infotrust team wanted to create a BI platform of their own. When given a quote from their partner SAP, Infotrust felt like they could build their own personalized software for less. While this software was being made, Johan quickly realized his company would need to headquarter in North America to capture a larger market. In relocating from Northern Europe to the United States, MoreReporting was born.
Headquartered in Provo, Utah, MoreReporting began operations in 2014. The company uses their BI tools to help bookkeepers automate their client reporting, provide analysis and industry benchmarks, improve budgets and forecasts, and turn external accountants into advisors.
MoreReporting has also created a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan forgiveness calculator for small businesses. This
PPP forgiveness calculator guides business owners to receive 100% forgiveness for Small Business Administration (SBA) loans taken out during the COVID-19 crisis.
Tradeshows and webinars helped MoreReporting obtain their first 100 customers. Johan’s marketing tip for tradeshows: take up as much space as possible. As seen below, being visually available from near and far helps catch a lot of attention (and complaints from other tradeshow booths).
Ultimately, it has been their product story that has turned potential leads into customers. Of this Johan said, “before your product will succeed, you need to prove that people can actually use your product. Have a story in place. What are they using your product for? How are they using your product to solve a problem? You'll get 10 customers with one version of the story, another 20 with another version of it, and so on until you feel comfortable with telling that story. That is why the first 100 customers are so difficult to get, because you are molding that story as you go along. Once you get to the other side you just have to repeat it. That is why its easier to go from 100 customers to 2,000 customers than 0-100.”
Contributors
Guest: Johan Colvig, Co-founder of MoreReporting
Host: Freddy Shelton, Founder of @TheFifthMarketing
Audio edits by Casey Yardley
Show notes by Mason Smith