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To Sell Anything You Need to Know What Makes You Unique

Both Sides of the Table

The reason for this is that the executives who founded the company have so much tacit knowledge of how to position their product relative to the competition that they can easily win campaigns when they’re involved. So I often work with teams to get them to codify the key things they do well that the competition does not.

Sales 336
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How to Handle a VC Presentation with No Deck

Both Sides of the Table

I’m comfortable with introductions and then getting into the demo.&#. I talked about this in the TWiVC video but I didn’t do a good enough job of writing it up in the summary notes in the post. If you want to go quickly to the demo – knock yourself out. Just jump into the demo after intros. Mobile app?

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Give Your Teams Swiss Army Knives

Both Sides of the Table

Packaging, pricing & discounts – In the early days of my first company we always had “list prices&# we quoted to customers and of course we were always willing to negotiate based on who the client was, how important the business was to us, who the competition was and how well the deal was negotiated. We called it PUCCKA.

Sales 296
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Why VCs Should Stop Trying to be Perfect

Both Sides of the Table

Sometimes those motives are positive (they really want the chance to work with you, they think you have unique skills) and sometimes they are less positive (their first-tier of “go to” referrals passed on the deal, they don’t want to write another check themselves, etc.). I seek out great entrepreneurs. End of story.

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Retro: My Favorite Blog Post on Raising VC

Both Sides of the Table

I had seen many cycles and decided that since I was going to do it all over again I should write about it. I decided to write about my experience and to be blunt. It became a huge kerfuffle with many VC partners writing to thank me for the post, which exposed those that gave their industry a bad name. And covered we did.

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Some Thoughts about Selling at Startups

Both Sides of the Table

The idea that the course asks students to write public blog posts is a testament to its more modern teaching style. My list of excuses includes: product, pricing, competition and lack of sales support. This includes presentations, ROI calculators, competitive analyses and so forth.

Startup 319
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The Audacious Plan to Make Electricity as Easy as WiFi

Both Sides of the Table

It’s true the some VCs have started writing so many checks that they resemble stock pickers but the majority of us still have less than 10 board seats at any time and tend to go pretty deep so the result is that we care deeply about where we commit our time. But it seemed to work. I spent one hour with them.