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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.
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.
This is part of a series on sales & marketing. I previously covered how early phase sales teams should be “evangelical&# and consultative in nature. The first post on scaling sales dealt with “aiming&# your sales teams – making sure they were focused on the right opportunities.
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.
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. Do you have an application that helps mobile developers build HTML5 apps? Do you have sales productivity software?
As a result I didn’t write my first venture capital check until March 2009 – exactly 5 years ago. I divided success into the phases of venture capital and 18 months into writing my first check here was my view (details on each in the link above). “I think the best VCs help drive exits alongside their entrepreneurs.
Jeff (also an HBS alum) co-teaches the LTV course with Professor Eisenmann about a student of theirs who had written a blog post about sales taking on some of my previous assertions. That student is Erin McCann who formerly worked in sales at Google, so she has some ground to stand on in her assertions. Specifically, 1.
So I thought I’d write about out with what I would look for in a VC knowing what I know now and why. To be clear – I’m not saying huge successes make a VC less likely to be helpful to you – I’m just saying it’s not a guaranteed predictor. I’m not afraid to help make difficult decisions.
Talented brand sales people? Help them write other stories. One day they’ll write yours. Imagine the human progress you could make with 250 short, relationship-focused meetings. Here’s why it’s critical: 1. Recruiting. Are you looking for great engineers? A smart young marketing exec? 50 coffee meetings.
This shows itself when people try to do an elevator pitch, send concise, actionable emails or have a quick phone call with you to ask for help. . I’m not talking only about a sales call, getting past the assistant or anything like that. How Can I Help? How can I best help you?” It’s what you want.
This is hardly ideal and some simple changes could help management avoid both issues. Every time I think to write a post about this I figure the most recent board meeting I’ve attended will think it’s about them so I don’t bother. should we ramp up sales hires now or wait for more traction?
If I can help you avoid some of my first-time mistakes it would be a victory. The biggest problem with over-stealthing yourself is that you cut off some of your most valuable resources in terms of testing your ideas, getting feedback from smart entrepreneurs & investors and helping you figure out the potential flaws in your approach.
I’m writing this post as part of my series with Advice on Raising Venture Capital but will file it under Sales Tips as well since it applies equally to both scenarios. This is true whether your at a sales meeting or at a VC firm. This happens often is sales meetings or VC meetings. Congratulations.
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. “We think this will actually change gaming for the long haul.
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.
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?”.
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.
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.
I write about sales often both because it’s the lifeblood of any organization and because in my experience it is the area in which more startups are least experienced or inclined. I also write and talk about it frequently because raising capital is a part of sales and this is important for entrepreneurs to understand.
This morning, Pasadena-based Perfect Market (www.perfectmarket.com) announced a new, $9M round of funding for the firm's technology, which is used to help publishers monetize their content. Julie Schoenfeld: When we talked last, we were focusing primarily on helping publisher monetize their archived content.
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 developed sales skills. She doubled her salary by going into sales. to $12m in sales. “A lot of sales is innate.
So I thought I’d write a post about how I drive my personal creativity. (A Visualization is so important to help yourself & others conceptualize ideas. The key is channeling what you learn when you drive onto paper for retention purposes so you have to write it down soon afterward. For others they swear by music.
I guess let’s file this under sales & marketing advice. Don’t just write a carbon copy of what somebody else is doing. OK, well, actually the first thing I did is come up with a list of 50 posts that I wanted to write. I didn’t want to run out of things to write about in the first 6 months.
The LIHEAP money is critical for the over 12 million Americans who have recently lost their job, the consortium argues and could also help finance the Department of Energy’s Weatherization program. “Startups and small businesses are the engine of every local and regional economy,” writes Peterson.
One way is developing testing tools and infrastructure around that market, to help those manufacturers in their research and development, which is just what Calabasas-based GridTest Systems (www.gridtest.com) is doing. We're there to help with that. We're essentially helping people at the R&D stages.
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.
I plan to write a whole separate blog post about this quote because it’s always stuck with me. An external consultant helping the procurement team overturned the decision and got the company to select a small software company owned by the consultancy. In every sales campaign of any substance (e.g. That is, until I lost.
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.
Preparing for the game… If you have been following our recent insights, you’ll be up to speed knowing that professional investors negotiate tough terms, from provisions of control over asset acquisition, eventual sale of the company, future investments, forced co-sale when others attempt to sell their shares and more.
Your entrée to sales meetings. At best “over introducers” are driven by a sincere desire to help other people. ” That you’re helpful. Helping with a Sales Lead. But I also try to help friends / close business associates get access to other people I know. Helping Access Money.
Unless you work in sales and you can compare cold, hard numbers let’s just be honest about the subjectivity. I next write a paragraph to describe what I mean by each comment. Next time write it down when it happened. Don’t have your staff write their own reviews. Put it in writing. That will never fly.
They had a prominent NorCal investor already so I thought a SoCal lead would make sense – that I could help them in a more hands-on way. 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.
A lot of my time is spent helping early-stage companies get to proof points so that they can raise capital. I should try to come back and write about this more, but the point of this post is that it's important not to only think about this aspect. If you've not had a C-level but have had experience in sales or tech.
The path I went down after a few years was to hire more process driven people and devolved more daily operational ownership to people running individual functions such as product management, sales management, finance, etc. One of the most obvious places where you see this is in sales & marketing. Ditto the CFO. I was the laggard.
They had a prominent NorCal investor already so I thought a SoCal lead would make sense – that I could help them in a more hands-on way. 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.
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. I help internet companies make money. I usually.just focus on revenue.
Here is my edited summary of their ten principles, which I like and may convince you that you don’t need a business plan at all, or at the very least will help you write a better one later: A new venture is a means, not an end. These include financial management, marketing and sales, and the appropriate production ability.
I would take all of the one-on-one conversations that I have with entrepreneurs from the things I’ve learned and just write them up for anybody to read. It might be a VP of Sales, Marketing or Technology. It might be a VP of Sales, Marketing or Technology. Or it may just be a junior programmer, sales rep or accountant.
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.
Understanding where your VC partner sits in their respective fund and where their fund is in the cycle of its investment lifecycle will help you understand your VCs behavior. In addition to helping manage the board Chris also helps represent the interests of the angel investors / common stock holders.
You need to be great at something: technology back-end, front-end design, usability, sales, marketing, quantitative analysis, leadership –> whatever. DJ’s couldn’t help but want to play his records. It also helps to start with a target demographic so you can focus your efforts.
I recently had the pleasure of spending an hour with Jon Steinberg, president of Buzzfeed , a company who focuses on helping media companies make their content go viral. I’ll write a post on how to give feedback to employees and then I’ll get emails from people telling me they forwarded it to their whole team.
But then you can springboard from there to your next gig and you’ll be an experienced startup employee with functional experience at sales, marketing, product or whatever roles you played.” Why not offer to work for $50k to help run biz dev? The first job you take may not work out financially. It’s gonna suck, I know.
I’m not saying I don’t spend time trying to help entrepreneurs that I am not planning to invest it – anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I do. So I spend much time with them and trying to help. I’ll write about that in a couple of weeks. I get to choose what I write about.
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