Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2010

Social proof is defined as “looking for others to guide our decisions&# and is also one of the most important techniques in acquiring customers in your company. We would take every day users from our customer base and make them heroes. Tags: Sales & Marketing Advice Startup Advice.

Marketing 294

Marketing Customer Custom Technical Review 294

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 21, 2014

It’s when the noise stops and you can actually get customer attention, press articles and VC meetings. People attending marquee conferences with rock bands, prominent speakers, Gartner Group prognosticators and lots of other happy customers. Have sales bonus plans based on more than just sales targets.

Marketing 354

Marketing Case Study Metrics Sales 354

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2022

You can have the best technology, but if customers don’t know you exist, or they don’t know how your technology solves a real problem for them, your startup will fail. In fact, this article was driven by a startup press release I saw a while back, highlighting a startup’s “geo-fencing technology” as a new basis for discount coupons.

Marketing 141

Marketing Startup Social Media Technical Review 141

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 21, 2021

Switch your focus from product development to sales. Explosive growth to an enterprise normally requires a scalable sales model, a well-documented process with incentives, training, and metrics for tracking and management. Of course, customer relationships, and penetration into new market segments are also critical elements.

Startup 151

Startup Course Sales Entrepreneur 151

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 19, 2011

He is very hands-on and helpful – especially for any company looking into customer acquisition. o Huge on PR, “Be Everywhere” is his motto – fly to NY, proactively everywhere he could get press. o Everything is for sale but it’s the price that moves the timing. To make PR big you need to find a way to “make news”.

Acquisition 304

Acquisition Startup Customer Custom 304

Tech.Co

MAY 6, 2022

Ecommerce company Shopify supports small businesses with technology like ecommerce website builders and retail Point of Sale systems. The two companies are a great match, according to Shopify's press release about the deal. Now, it's dramatically expanding capacity in another area, fulfillment, with the acquisition of Deliverr.

Networking 123

Networking Press Newsletter Startup 123

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2011

Understand the Gravity of the Situation for Your Customers. The obvious starting points to think to yourself are: Has something happened that fundamentally affects my customers or partners? We learned that from the original “gate.&# If you were hacked and customer passwords were stolen, get the story to your customers ASAP.

Startup 329

Startup Press Training Media 329

Berkonomics

APRIL 2, 2020

Record plants were noisy, dirty places, using chemicals I can only imagine now rest somewhere in the ocean, to electroplate the “stampers” and press the records. That is sudden change, brought about by the fast acceptance of the cassette, which in turn gave way to the next technology, CDs, after a rather short lifecycle.

Southern California 177

Southern California Examples Social Network Press 177

TechCrunch LA

AUGUST 9, 2022

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but when it comes to getting ahold of an appointment for your hair or another treatment…that’s a different story: The bespoke nature of a lot of the work has meant that a large swathe of the professionals providing these services have stayed offline when it comes to interfacing with customers.

Help 195

Help Startup UCLA Tool 195

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

The functions of an early-stage board are pretty obvious and well understood: Providing introductions to customers, biz dev partners, recruits, the press, other investors, etc. how much energy to put into channel partners vs. direct sales. how to build an initial sales organization. Mentorship. As You Start to Mature.

Startup 325

Startup Sales Technical Review Software Review 325

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 14, 2010

They are tasked with “getting deals done&# so they race around talking to tons of potential partners inking anything from channel sale deals , product integration, international distribution agreements, co-marketing arrangements, M&A discussions, etc. Here’s how it goes: You have a business development group with two people.

Startup 323

Startup Press Development Team Review SEM 323

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 13, 2011

They will often run all of the daily reports into them covering off for finance, sales, marketing, biz dev & HR. You can always spot these types because they can’t tell you what their revenue number for last month was or what their sales target is for next month. But ask yourself, what does a COO actually do?

Startup 325

Startup Technical Review Sales Report 325

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 14, 2014

All the data actually suggests with the growth of mobile, inbound sales calls will double from 30 billion to 60 billion in 3 years (source: Kelsey). In fact 61% of all mobile searches where a customer contacts a business it is via a phone call (source: Google). In the US alone there are 30 billion inbound sales calls every year.

Email 339

Email SaaS Venture Capital Google 339

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 17, 2019

But like the company Kyriba, where we recently sold our position at above $1 billion, it took time until the revenue exceeded $100 million recurring and then the industry really competed to back this amazing company since it had scale, defensible technology and long-term, committed customers. Over the past 2.5 Why does that matter?

Venture Capital 223

Venture Capital IP Startup Google 223

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 4, 2019

You can have the best technology, but if customers don’t know you exist, or they don’t know how your technology solves a real problem for them, your startup will fail. In fact, this article was driven by a startup press release I saw a while back, highlighting a startup’s “geo-fencing technology” as a new basis for discount coupons.

Marketing 97

Marketing Entrepreneur Startup Technical Review 97

InfoChachkie

JANUARY 18, 2012

We just knew that we were onto an idea that no one had thought of and we had better be in the press first because, of course, there is a first-mover advantage. Number one is sales. Life is sales. Business development is sales. Winning customers is sales. Getting press is sales. Flip Burgers.

Entrepreneur 272

Entrepreneur Startup Conference Santa Barbara 272

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 6, 2023

Use your favorite search engine and keywords describing your solution to find online sales reports, trade association statistics, and online newsletters with the latest statistics. Competitor annual reports, white papers, press releases, and presentations are great sources of data and trends that you can use to support your own efforts.

Statistics 120

Statistics Research Report Newsletter 120

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 17, 2017

The most obvious way to explain this is with sales people. If you hire 6 senior sales reps in January at $120,000 / year salary then you’ve taken on an extra $60,000 per month in costs yet these sales people might not close new business 6 months. COGS” represents the amount that each sale costs you.

Startup 227

Startup Venture Capital Sales Course 227

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2017

They are tasked with “getting deals done” so they race around talking to tons of potential partners inking anything from channel sale deals , product integration, international distribution agreements, co-marketing arrangements, M&A discussions, etc. Here’s how it goes: You have a business development group with two people.

Activity 164

Activity Conference Press Case Study 164

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

At times I wanted the engineering team to produce features to support our sales efforts to I occasionally leaned on them a bit. So he would allocate say – 20% to sales, 15% to marketing, 20% to eng priorities, 10% to customer support, 10% to ops, 20% to ‘platinum customers’ and maybe 5% directly to me as the CEO.

Startup 150

Startup Sales CTO Coach Course 150

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2010

Conventional wisdom in most companies is that “the competition is the enemy&# – it’s the rallying cry to dig deeper, get more features out the door, issue press releases citing differences and attack the competition’s weaknesses in sales presentations. We didn’t collude (e.g.

Cloud Computing 320

Cloud Computing Competition Press Startup 320

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 27, 2019

My simple answer is that they keep their focus on customers, rather than technology. Jeff Bezos has kept his focus on customers. In my view, every startup in today’s world would do well to adopt a management system with the same key objectives: Start with a customer-obsessed business model.

Marketing 123

Marketing Technical Review Customer Custom 123

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 28, 2018

If a consumer will pay a fixed price for a product or service then the battle over who gets the margin in any sale is between the person who merchandises a product and the person who manufactures it. Ariel understood her customer?—?the This is an age-old marketplace tension where leverage often determines the value captured.

Product 296

Product Course Customer Custom 296

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2013

For much of 2013 I watched the press write articles about how the YouTube “MCNs” (multi-channel networks) were doomed and tried to square that with the data I was watching at the one I invested in, Maker Studios, who has had one hell of a year. I agree with YouTube (that they provide more (hosting, ad sales, etc.)

Networking 366

Networking Media Content Customer 366

InfoChachkie

APRIL 13, 2015

Because I am cheap and I know that car dealers are incentivized by the manufacturer to hit quarterly and annual sales goals. Thus, the value of a sale at the end of a quarter can be significant, if the sale contributes to obtaining a manufacturer''s incentive. Avoid The End-Of-The-Quarter Trou Drop.

Pricing 100

Pricing Startup Sales SaaS 100

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 25, 2015

As we went from a small band of missionaries hell bent on making our idea a reality, raising capital, getting press, and selling to customers – we were all having fun. We built a business with $36 million in bookings and real customers who relied upon our service.

Demand 150

Demand SaaS Startup Sales 150

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 13, 2018

The most important advice I could give you before you set out in fund raising mode is to understand that fund-raising a sales & marketing process and needs to be managed. Somehow many first-time founders equate “sales” with something that is beneath them. In sales there are also three rules: Qualify, qualify, qualify.

Venture Capital 332

Venture Capital Funding Startup Sales 332

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2014

Yesterday I wrote a post about The Silent Benefits of PR in which I pointed out that most young companies I encounter don’t fully grasp the benefits of PR because they are less measurable than product milestones or customer acquisition analyses (like CAC/LTV). Make sure you’re not spewing out meaningless reams of press releases.

Press 319

Press Startup Writing Training 319

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2011

.&# Marketing futures can be really good for enterprise software companies where the information is passed between sales rep and potential customer in terms of near-term roadmap. But don’t let this information get out into the general press and don’t market more than a few months out. They come and go.

Marketing 380

Marketing Startup Press Technical Advisors 380

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 29, 2014

Maybe they’ve hit a few set backs: They’ve struggled to raise money, they haven’t gotten press coverage or they haven’t gotten accepted to present at prestigious conferences. It ends up being a turn off to potential employees, investors, business partners and the press. It’s your job to persist.

Venture Capital 389

Venture Capital Email Startup Conference 389

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 28, 2009

We hadn’t even thought about having a customer support line or who would staff it. Our customers were generally happy but they were pushing us hard for promised features. Our sales forecasts were revised downward – many times. We kept reading about their customer wins, their product releases and their biz dev deals.

Startup 331

Startup Press Customer Custom 331

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 14, 2020

Use your favorite search engine and keywords describing your solution to find online sales reports, trade association statistics, and online newsletters with the latest statistics. Competitor annual reports, white papers, press releases, and presentations are great sources of data and trends that you can use to support your own efforts.

Marketing 157

Marketing Statistics Research Report 157

Berkonomics

MAY 16, 2013

Record plants were noisy, dirty places, using chemicals I can only imagine now rest somewhere in the ocean, to electroplate the “stampers” and press the records. That is sudden change, brought about by the fast acceptance of the cassette, which in turn gave way to the next technology, CDs, after a rather short lifecycle.

Southern California 228

Southern California Social Network Press Guide 228

socalTECH

JUNE 9, 2010

Last week, Los Angeles-based HauteLook (www.hautelook.com), an online private sales site, scored a major round of funding--raising $31M from Insight Venture Partners. Adam Bernhard: We're a platform that does flash sales. Adam, thanks for the time. We work on behalf of brands, as a web site that has a membership base of over 2.5

Sales 224

Sales Email Startup Sample 224

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 16, 2011

Talented brand sales people? Understanding customer requirement ? Whatever amount you’re getting out and talking with prospects, customers, employees, recruits, competitors, press, investors, potential investors … it’s never enough. Here’s why it’s critical: 1. Recruiting. 50 coffee meetings.

Startup 410

Startup Writing Press Venture Capital 410

Eric Greenspan

JULY 3, 2012

Our customers benefitted from this and saved thousands over the years as a result. But later in 2011, new customers slowed, appointment bookings slowed and average appointment time dropped. In May of 2012, sales dropped drastically. Sales remained sluggish during this period, but we were not giving up. I was wrong.

Capital 234

Capital Pricing Press Customer 234

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 12, 2017

You can have the best technology, but if customers don’t know you exist, or they don’t know how your technology solves a real problem for them, your startup will fail. In fact, this article was driven by a startup press release I saw a while back, highlighting a startup’s “geo-fencing technology” as a new basis for discount coupons.

Tips 75

Tips Marketing Technical Review Startup 75