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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.
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.
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 my ongoing Sales & Marketing Series. In the first part of this post I talked about how sales in a startup is often evangelical , requires as consultative sale and needs constant adjustments based on customer feedback. We had 4 or 5 sales reps that had been around since the early days.
There can be nothing more important in your business planning that selecting the proper pricing niche, making your story clear using that niche, and the defending your position against the competition. There are exceptions, based upon cost of sales. What competition would you face? So, here comes the lesson and your challenge….
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.
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?”
He is very hands-on and helpful – especially for any company looking into customer acquisition. o Everything is for sale but it’s the price that moves the timing. o Put a timeframe/money – competition in the picture. Passion: Have to be able to motivate people, customers, team, yourself. we both love Jason).
But if you level up , raise capital and grow customers, revenue and staff – life changes. Eventually you need a VP of Product to handle your product roadmap, a CTO for engineering leadership and VPs of sales, marketing & biz dev. Extremely talented people are ultra competitive. Do you hire more sales people?
Compelling in the sense that you solve a real problem a target group of potential customers has with a product that is significantly better than the alternatives on that market. The idea of “going deep” with customers has always shaped how I think. I found myself in violent agreement with Fred’s blog post(s).
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. You know, frenemies. When Enemies are Good.
Having the best solution is a good start these days, but a solution alone is no longer enough to keep customer attention and loyalty. The challenge is to transform and hardwire your entire team to think in these terms, rather than the default focus on distinct towers of product quality, closing the sale, or fixing a complaint.
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.
Management undertakes a simple exercise of calculating the increased profitability of shutting down all R&D, sales and subordinate operations, and universally notes with shock the high net profit that results – from shutting down all operations except customer service to recurring customers (as in software support operations.).
With the advent of the Internet, social media, and instant communication via texting, customer expectations for service, as part of their entire customer experience, have changed. They expect you to be there, to know their history as a customer, and to treat them with priority and respect.
In case you hadn’t noticed, the key elements of a competitive advantage for your business have changed as businesses move online, and your domain is instantly global. As a business advisor, I have to recommend even to established companies that they review and revamp their competitive strategy now, even if it appears to be working today.
The most obvious way to explain this is with sales people. If you hire 6 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 for 4-6 months. “COGS” represents the amount that each sale costs you.
Does your business have a visible positive strategy, or do your customers and employees still see your primary focus as closing more sales and killing competitors? Certainly that has been the strategy of many companies, and has worked in the past, but today’s customers and workers are looking for more.
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.
An entrepreneur pitches using a deck with no slide for competition. We have no competition.”. Your potential customers could choose “do nothing.”. So, do your homework especially well by putting yourself into the minds of your potential customers. We investors see this all the time. Do your homework!
They forget that adapting their company and themselves as their customers evolve is the key to long-term survival. Think of Blockbuster and Toys ‘R’ Us , both of whom missed customer changes and the move to online. Create an overt strategy to react to emerging customer trends. Expand into key new sales and delivery channels.
Yet, as a business consultant, I often find minimal focus on improving employee engagement and assessing their customer-facing performance. For example, I commonly see metrics to keep track of revenue per employee, overtime, and absenteeism, but I don’t often see measures of overall customer satisfaction with individual employees.
These are so succinct, so well defined, so precise that everyone in sales and everyone involved in marketing must be able to answer these three questions without pause, and convincingly. It would pay you to work over this set of questions in a special session with sales, marketing and senior management in the room at once.
These are so succinct, so well defined, so precise that everyone in sales and everyone involved in marketing must be able to answer these three questions without pause, and convincingly. It would pay you to work over this set of questions in a special session with sales, marketing and senior management in the room at once.
Management undertakes a simple exercise of calculating the increased profitability of shutting down all R&D, sales and subordinate operations, and universally notes with shock the high net profit that results – from shutting down all operations except customer service to recurring customers (as in software support operations.).
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.
You can always tell during this discussion whether the entrepreneur has logged into their products, talked to their customers, read all the news stories and gotten all of the back channel info on the competition. You can tell if they have a deep-seated competitive spirit. Can’t go a mile deep on competition?
Customer service has traditionally been focused on the resolution of complaints , primarily after a transaction. In this context, even “satisfied” is only a “meets-minimum,” and does not put you ahead of your competition. Treat every customer exceptionally before they complain. Even the best marketing doesn’t do it.
4 times / 100 means if a customer uses your app frequently (say 10-20 times / day) then they are crashing nearly every day. Customer Acquisition. At the highest level you’ll obviously want to track how many customers your adding every month (and for some businesses that have hit scale this is measured on a daily basis).
Most businesses spend big money testing their brand logo, catchy marketing phrases, and demographics, but spend little time training and validating that their employees can and do deliver exceptional experiences to their customers. They have to out-behave and outperform your competition. Gregg Lederman, in his classic book, “ ENGAGED!:
Today’s customers are much more in control of their buying decision, as they have more choices and more information than ever before. Bloom’s classic book, “ The New Experts: Win Today's Newly Empowered Customers.” This is a key moment where your customer acquisition costs go way down, and your profits go way up.
Once you put your offer in, you enter your credit card, and you commit to the sale. Once that offer is accepted, that make the sale, and the retailer handles the transaction just as if it happened on their own website. We take a commission on the sale, and everybody is happy. Retailers only pay us if the sale happens.
general manager ( Stefano Benatti ) — filled more orders in the first two months of 2020 than all its sales for 2019, according to Cevolini. The venture is also one of the few e-motorcycle companies drawing engineering tips from competition. Track competition is a secondary arena for Energica. In the U.S.,
Many people are too cautious in sales processes and as a result when they present their solutions they end up sounding milquetoast and undifferentiated from anybody else in the market. I recently wrote about the three rules of sales. The first of question is about qualifying your potential customers aka leads. Why Buy Me?
Contrary to popular opinion, viral marketing has not eliminated the need for old-fashioned lead generation to bring customers to a startup. Display ads on mobile devices, including video and audio, also offer a new opportunity to reach target customers. Display advertising. Email marketing.
I agree with YouTube (that they provide more (hosting, ad sales, etc.) Of course it’s a competitive market so MCNs competing for top talent not only compete on rev share to talent but also to services that they provide talent. Building direct customer relationships with viewers (who want to tune into your channels).
Detailed roadmap of features you plan to build Detailed customer information Salary information Any other information you wouldn’t want seen or know by your competitors or a larger audience In short, there is nothing in your deck that should give you pause or make you feel like you can’t just send the damn file to somebody.
Today’s customers are much more in control of their buying decision, as they have more choices and more information than ever before. Bloom’s classic book, “ The New Experts: Win Today's Newly Empowered Customers.” This is a key moment where your customer acquisition costs go way down, and your profits go way up.
Having the best solution is a good start these days, but a solution alone is no longer enough to keep customer attention and loyalty. The challenge is to transform and hardwire your entire team to think in these terms, rather than the default focus on distinct towers of product quality, closing the sale, or fixing a complaint.
I recently did a post for startups on understanding sales people. They care about the quality of what is build more than they care about end customers. As you head into the phase where you’ve had real customers paying real money for a period of time you’ll have a whole new set of issues. In summary.
This is important because the customers they serve (the red line) demand a product that meets their complex requirements. In fact, the incumbent is usually very dismissive of this new competition as our the large buyers of the incumbent’s products. So the startups tend to focus on totally new customers. They can’t.
And that behavior results in leaving little time for outreach to the most critical component in your chain – your key customers. Then, what is a benchmark for customer outreach? But, do your customer know that they want? Do customers know what they want from their suppliers for future products? That’s bad behavior!
Linktree leads the space, securing a recent $45 million Series B raise to build out e-commerce features, but Beacons boasts competitive creator monetization tools with just a $6 million seed round in May. Snipfeed is free to set up, but if you make sales, the company takes 15% — this percentage is inclusive of any transaction fees.
As I talk to many of you in my role as business advisor, I still often hear the concern for maximum return to the business and stakeholders, more than a passion for sustainably enriching the lives of your customers and team. This applies to your own team, as well as customers. Make every customer experience memorable.
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