This site uses cookies to improve your experience. To help us insure we adhere to various privacy regulations, please select your country/region of residence. If you do not select a country, we will assume you are from the United States. Select your Cookie Settings or view our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Used for the proper function of the website
Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Strictly Necessary: Used for the proper function of the website
Performance/Analytics: Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Specifically what is often not in the DNA of founders are sales skills. The result is a lack of knowledge of the process and of sales people themselves. I had never had any sales training so everything we did for the first couple of years was instinctual. I boil it down to this: sales people are sales people.
This is part of a series on sales & marketing. I previously covered how early phase sales teams should be “evangelical&# and consultative in nature. As a tech startup grows it needs to develop more process & management if it is to scale. More experienced sales leaders seldom compete on price.
In my first enterprise software company we developed a methodology for sales that we called PUCCKA. Having a methodology instead of just going on random sales visits helped force a bit of rigor and honesty amongst team members about how well or not we thought we were doing. The best sales meetings are discussions.
Every sales organization with more than a handful of reps or that is across multiple offices or time zones would benefit from having a sales methodology. I’ve been writing a series on a simple methodology that we used at my first enterprise software company. There are many out there and many books have been written on the topic.
Although an additional 140 Oswald episodes were produced over the next 14 years, none of them was nearly as successful as the first 26 installments, which were developed under Walt Disney’s tutelage. I write a bit more about how entrepreneurs can protect their ideas here: Spilling The Beans. Timing and luck also play a role.
But should you actually write one if you’re a startup, an industry figure (lawyer, banker) or VC? This is a post to help you figure out why you should write and what you should talk about. So you developed a product for the mommy community? Do you have an application that helps mobile developers build HTML5 apps?
I spent my first year developing proprietary deal flow and learning the business and then the Sept 2008 / Lehman Bros collapse / financial meltdown happened. As a result I didn’t write my first venture capital check until March 2009 – exactly 5 years ago. I become a venture capitalist in September 2007 – exactly 6.5
Business Development - Biz Dev is hard. Enterprise Sales – The very first thing a potential customer does when you email or call to set up a meeting is Google you. Of course you need a new angle to get a journalist interested because they don’t simply want to write what everybody else has covered. Classmates call.
In my first enterprise software company we developed a methodology for sales that we called PUCCKA , which I wrote about previously. Having a good sales methodology can help you ensure your company runs more disciplined campaigns and focuses scarce resources on your best opportunities. But how would I use it?”.
So I know I’m getting myself into a bit of trouble by writing this. They will often run all of the daily reports into them covering off for finance, sales, marketing, biz dev & HR. Similarly I talk to CEOs who can’t do a sales pipeline review with me. I think usually a COO title at a startup is an ego thing.
So I thought I’d write about out with what I would look for in a VC knowing what I know now and why. Of course it is super helpful if a VC can drop you in to important people for business development, recruiting, PR, sales and eventually M&A. Most VCs are book smart. Connections? It’s not you.
After college Joanne worked for 4 years in retail apparel at Macy’s where she initially managed sales reps on the floor and then worked as a buyer of clothing. This is where she first developedsales skills. She doubled her salary by going into sales. to $12m in sales. “A lot of sales is innate.
You’ll get sales information from your VP of Sales, marketing information from your VP Marketing, tech information from your CTO and so on. An obvious example would be in sales. By going on sales calls you pick up directly the feedback of what customers want and also what they’re telling you about competition.
The proposal sets out four big initiatives, including zero-emissions vehicle manufacturing, assembly and adoption; zero-emissions infrastructure investments; commitments to public transit investments; workforce development; and job training. Light-duty charging infrastructure occupies another $10 billion of the suggested stimulus measures.
So I thought I’d write a post about how I drive my personal creativity. (A The key is channeling what you learn when you drive onto paper for retention purposes so you have to write it down soon afterward. When I write a blog post I often see the words before I write them. These are all creative processes.
I said, ''Hey, listen were going to start writing this newsletter and it''s going to highlight our trials and tribulations, our failures and our successes. The opening paragraphs of that first newsletter are indicative of the captivating and accessible writing style, which eventually cultivated a huge audience. And of those 35 people.
I find it amusing when a journalist writes an article about a prominent startup (either privately held or preparing for an IPO) and decries that, “They’re not even profitable!” The most obvious way to explain this is with sales people. “COGS” represents the amount that each sale costs you.
Even as NFT sales dip below their most speculative highs, startups aiming to tap into their potential are still scoring big funding rounds from investors who believe there’s much more to crypto collectibles than the past few months of hype. The round was led by WestCap.
There's a lot out there around Customer Development - read Steve Blank : Entrepreneurship as a Science – The Business Model/Customer Development Stack - Steve Blank , October 25, 2010 Checklists for Chaos, The Path to Success - Steve Blank , October 28, 2010 and reading about Lean, MVPs, etc. What are they really looking for?
Nobody likes to hear you say, “we can’t tell you anything we’re in stealth mode&# so develop some generic talking points that don’t give anything away when you’re asked what you do. Market to Your Target Audience – I’ve seen a lot of startups who like to write blog posts on life as an entrepreneur.
Our interview today is with Amos Schwartzfarb , the author of Sell More Faster: The Ultimate Sales Playbook for Start-Ups , which comes out tomorrow, Wednesday. We caught up with Amos to learn about his new book, and to gain some tips for startup entrepreneurs on how to figure out when you're actually ready to scale your sales team.
Write things down. Looong Appendix (only for those interested in reading another story about losing a sale & key lessons): A personal story of losing a sale that haunted me for years. They were looking for a collaboration tool to manage all of their large water development projects. Be gracious.
Write things down. Looong Appendix (only for those interested in reading another story about losing a sale & key lessons): A personal story of losing a sale that haunted me for years. They were looking for a collaboration tool to manage all of their large water development projects. Be gracious.
We’re expected to be at conferences, events, sales meetings and be publicly visible. Recruiting, business development, shipping product, writing blog posts, networking … it’s all the same. We are over-intro’d and at the same time under-resourced in terms of staff to handle the barrage of in-bound requests.
Vince: I’m an author, speaker and management consultant with a special expertise in online media sales. I started out as screenwriter, went into local television, ran ad sales in the west for AOL and joined Facebook in the companies very early days. Vince: In addition to my management writing I’ve interview many CEOs and innovators.
If you’re an early investor like I am that often means writing the first $2-3 million check into a business that previously had either survived on fumes or on a $500,000 angel round. The best ones bring in more executive leadership so you can appropriate allocate resources across sales, marketing, product, engineering and support.
I am chairman of a company that, as I write this, is twelve years old and has not yet taken a dollar of outside investment. Grant writing takes skill and immense amounts of time. First, here’s a link to my recent TEDx talk, “Smiling at success; laughing at failure.”
But poly sci taught me critical thinking and writing skills that I didn’t get in my econ classes. He writes about the fabric of American life, often from the perspective of his Jewish, New Jersey roots. The patriarch of the family works his arse off developing expertise in making gloves for other people. Fight monoculture.
You help them on stories, act as a source, develop real relationships, read their stories and eventually when you have news they’re more willing to have a conversation. The reality is that a journalist who’s writing a story about you – a relatively unknown entity – wants to hear directly from the founders and/or the CEO.
Jimmy Hendricks: We make a percentage of every sale. I was hired to run their tennis division, and I built our the sales division for their tennis team. Our project manager, a couple of our advisors, and a couple of our sales people, our head of business development--we're all from Active. It's similar to a franchise.
I’ve wanted to write a blog post called “Mobile Second” for a long time to make this point more forcefully. The world is adopting smart phones and for many young people and many people in the developing world this will be one of their first computing devices. Try writing long reviews of a restaurant.
If I were writing about the most important attributes of a VC (hmmm) one of the things that would make my list is “ability to spot patterns.&# I see the same things over-and-over again and being able to spot things and compartmentalize them is important – it helps with short-handing analysis and learning. We were SMOKING cash.
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.
We both felt that the critical reasoning skills and writing skills were critical to our career development. Private, flash sales site focused on apparel goods (women, men and children). Metrics: 2.5mm members, 1,000 brands, 2,500 sale events to-date. Metrics: 2.5mm members, 1,000 brands, 2,500 sale events to-date.
I often get asked for advice on Business Development. I’ve spent most of my career in sales (or some sales like function), and here are my thoughts on how to be better with your BD. The Sale Begins After the Deal is Done – You closed the deal, so what! 10 Tips for Better BD. Now the real work begins.
First Principles. Steve Blank , January 25, 2010 10 Tips for Adding Game Mechanics to a Non-Gaming Service - ReadWriteStart , September 21, 2010 Startups & VCs: Learn How to Design, Market, & Eat Your Own. -
At Silicon Beach Fest Hollywood 2012 Kevin Winston organized a panel called “How to Find and Hire a Developer”. Always have a developer do a test project before hiring them to make sure they deliver quality work. This will prove your product is worth building to you and to the developer. Ask for is code samples.
We were of course there to work with incarcerated men on developing entrepreneurial skills on behalf of Defy Ventures. It is how sales reps talk to prospects about their products & services to try and gain buy-in for a sale. Yes, I always imagined announcing the company that way.
But while universities are developing online content they are not fundamentally disrupting leaning because the method of delivery is not a new business model. In many ways I think general purpose writing & thinking skills are as valuable as math skills. The numerator (return) encourages more sales, which is fine.
The VC’s & executives were then asked to make “commitments&# (in writing) to 3-5 of the companies that they felt they could make some sort of contribution to. But at the highest level they’ve created a marketplace for “flash&# sales. And of course we had, TheMan. Now begins the 6-month journey.
These grants include funding to educational institutions, researchers, research centers, colleges and universities, or private companies that are researching or developing leading edge solutions in several categories including agriculture, education, energy, health, medical, space, science and technology to name a few.
You’re writing a freaking blog post! I never get grumpy that people write. If you do randomly write me I have advice. Research & Development. So I ask you – if you’re being reactive to somebody else’s emails are you really being as productive in your company as you could be? “But WAIT !!!
Your entrée to sales meetings. Helping with a Sales Lead. After all, if your VCs won’t help you get access to potential buyers or business development partners – what will they do? If you find yourself writing this in an email – think twice about sending it. They are your route to angel money.
I don’t feel like canceling LinkedIn just because occasionally a well-meaning but slightly not-clued-in person from a faraway place wants me to be their personal mentor, answer 3-questions for their high-school entrepreneurship project or take a sales pitch for their recruiting services. I’m not an elitist a **e. I still sleep at night.
We organize all of the trending information in your field so you don't have to. Join 5,000+ users and stay up to date on the latest articles your peers are reading.
You know about us, now we want to get to know you!
Let's personalize your content
Let's get even more personalized
We recognize your account from another site in our network, please click 'Send Email' below to continue with verifying your account and setting a password.
Let's personalize your content