InfoChachkie

MARCH 8, 2011

I write a bit more about how entrepreneurs can protect their ideas here: Spilling The Beans. As described in Buzz Kill , many college-educated professionals tend to write at a level that is uncomfortable for most people (including college graduates) to read. I was shocked that my pedestrian answer was so well received.

Writing

Berkonomics

APRIL 27, 2023

Everyone who manages a company, a workgroup or a sales force wants to write as many new deals as possible and is usually wary about doing anything that might threaten the positive outcome of a pending sale. Will you enforce a deadline if you could lose the sale? The post Are you a dictator about sales deadlines?

Sales

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 3, 2014

Even in this age of videos and text messages, the quickest way to kill your startup dream with investors, business partners, or even customers, is embarrassingly poor writing. You have to be able to communicate effectively in all the common forms, including business writing, as well as talking, presenting, and producing videos.

Writing

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 31, 2012

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.

Startup

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 27, 2011

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 sales productivity software? Write out the topic and maybe even the blog title. By definition, you read blogs.

Blogging

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 16, 2011

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.

Startup

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 24, 2014

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). 5 years ago. Sourcing high-quality leads : 9/10. The monkey on my back.

Venture Capital

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 25, 2014

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. but didn’t convert to sales. Classmates call.

Press

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 19, 2010

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.

Venture Capital

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 20, 2013

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. It the second rule of sales, “Why Buy Me?”

Sales

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 10, 2015

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.

Sales

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 13, 2011

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.

Startup

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

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. and I realized that without years of experience it is tough to answer this question.

Venture Capital

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 8, 2010

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.

Blogging

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 16, 2011

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.

Startup

Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 17, 2016

Everyone who manages a company or its sales force wants to write as many new deals as possible, and is usually warry about doing anything that might threaten the positive outcome of a pending sale. Deadlines are an important sales tool. The most powerful tool you have in a sales environment is a deadline.

Sales

InfoChachkie

JUNE 3, 2013

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.

Newsletter

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

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.

Startup

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 17, 2011

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.

Writing

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

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.

Startup

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 1, 2011

I started by writing 3-4 times / week. I didn’t have any grand ambitions other than to write, share ideas and try to build awareness of who I am through my thoughts. Just like a sales person at the end of a quarter. I still have to get sales, operations, finance, HR & corp dev right to win. I did that?

Startup

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 23, 2010

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.

Startup

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. Market to Your Target Audience – I’ve seen a lot of startups who like to write blog posts on life as an entrepreneur. Read their articles.

Marketing

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 9, 2013

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. So I’m going to write a series of board meetings posts unrelated to anybody or maybe an amalgamation of them all. should we charge for our product or be freemium?

Writing

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 27, 2021

When you first start your career as an investor (or when you first start writing angel checks) your main obsession is “getting into great deals.” the sale of the company for $1 billion. You’re thinking about one bullet at a time. billion When Ring started, even the folks at Shark Tank wouldn’t fund it. It was ~30 days from bankruptcy.

Funding

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 19, 2015

Sales people (and website customer acquisition folks) all think in terms of funnels and yet non-sales professionals seldom do. It doesn’t matter if it’s recruiting, business development, shipping product, writing blog posts, networking … it’s all the same. Lots of people start, very few finish.

Startup

Berkonomics

AUGUST 17, 2023

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.

Invest

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 15, 2013

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.

Writing

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

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.

Sales

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 3, 2019

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.

Sales

TechCrunch LA

JUNE 9, 2021

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.

Platform

socalTECH

JANUARY 18, 2011

What that did, is it helped us to expand the service to help publishers do the following: identify what content to write, how to distribute that content to various mediums, and how to monetize that content. Journalists are notorious for not wanting to write based on revenues or commercial intersts, or having anyone tell them what to write.

Marketing

TechCrunch LA

APRIL 23, 2020

An additional way the government could juice the auto industry — and specifically electric vehicles — is by providing point of sale rebates for all vehicles that could be issued through car dealerships, according to the proposal. Light-duty charging infrastructure occupies another $10 billion of the suggested stimulus measures.

Southern California

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 25, 2013

I’m not talking only about a sales call, getting past the assistant or anything like that. Write your set of bullet points on paper before the call. When you jump straight into “sales pitch mode” it feels a bit strange. How Can I Help? How can I best help you?” ” It’s what we want.

Startup

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 2, 2011

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. A few things jumped out at me: - Experience in sales or technology - considered a minor negative? If you've not had a C-level but have had experience in sales or tech. is a requirement.

Startup

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

I plan to write a whole separate blog post about this quote because it’s always stuck with me. 5 years or so later I still revisit that sales campaign and relive many of the steps. I wanted to write a follow up post because it was such an important lesson for me and so eye opening. In fact, ramp up your efforts.

Startup

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2010

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. We helped the write out their requirements for a system. I later learned one of my biggest lesson in sales. Be gracious.

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