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I’ve taken to saying, “Email is our personal to-do list that anybody adds to – whether they know us or not.” about their marathon 4-hour sessions to get to zero inbox or somebody else claiming email bankruptcy ( definition if you don’t know it already ). I have taken to limiting my outbound email.
Your entrée to sales meetings. And in most cases I would heed Fred Wilson’s advice about the “double opt-in” email for intros – where you ask for permission before green-lighting an unsolicited introductions. Helping with a Sales Lead. And then there is the email blaster / form letter introducer.
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. You can’t quantify the value of email yet everybody needs it!”.
I’d like to talk about Crocodile Salesmen in 3 scenarios: 1) when YOU are selling (or someone on your team), 2) when you are trying to recruit a sales person. But how to apply “listening&# in a sales meeting? They don’t handle Twitter feedback, emails or IM. I still do this sometimes, too.
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.
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.
They get pissed off if a senior executive at Google doesn’t take a meeting with them, if people are late to their meetings or if they have emails that are unreturned. The 70% of entrepreneurs that simply can’t get past an un-responded-to email. You need to know how to write good & action oriented emails.
I’m working on a larger series on “scaling sales&# that will drop this weekend or early next week so I thought I’d go for a more light-hearted topic today. I’ve always thought about writing a few posts on features in products that drive me nuts. We all use email in our daily lives. Is this evil?
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?
It’s apropos because there is so much noise these days with email, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, web shows, etc. If I check Twitter it’s usually because I’m waiting for a meeting to start and I never write posts during the day. He’s committed to getting through every email. I read 95% of my email.
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.
Having read his latest op-ed on email I know why I erred towards the side of of not loving his book as much as some did. Apparently he’s an “organizational psychologist professor and thinks that it’s rude not to answer email. I also surmise that perhaps organizational psychologists don’t get as much unsolicited emails as some of us do.
I got an email recently from my friend & fellow VC, Jeff Bussgang from Flybridge Capital Partners in Boston. 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. Specifically, 1.
Talented brand sales people? You send them update emails. Help them write other stories. One day they’ll write yours. Are you looking for great engineers? A smart young marketing exec? If you wait until you need to fill somebody in a roll you’re losing valuable time as an entrepreneur. 50 coffee meetings.
That was back when VCs weren’t so quick to respond to emails. 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 did that? Here we go.
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. Press matters.
You can watch/listen to how John and Kyle turned their email newsletter into an international bestseller in the following 9-minute excerpt from John''s recent talk at UC Santa Barbara. an email) to about 35 people. If you want to be kept informed just send me an email and let me know that you''re in, and that was it.
In this period (less than 2 years) he has brought on incredibly talented senior execs is sales, marketing, product management, client services, finance, vp engineering and more. Email updates frequently. Key point – if your emails are as long as my blog posts you’re forked. Make your emails actionable.
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.
I have long wanted to write about FNAC (feature, not a company) because it’s part of my normal lexicon to push teams that present to me to think harder about where the economics in their industry is coming from. I received a couple of emails from my friends and colleagues vigorously defending GroupMe. It lingered.
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. Write your set of bullet points on paper before the call. How can I best help you?”
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.
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.
And finally, there are the thirty-plus sad exits that were complete write-offs for the investors, sometimes regaining some portion of note-holder or creditor money in the process. I cannot recall ever attending a closing dinner for a sale in which we returned only a portion of the investor group’s money.
They write in their investment documents that they will occupy a seat on the board for as long as they are invested in the company, thinking of this as a protection for their investment and tool for them to influence growth. All other board functions are secondary.
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.
As executives we’re all seemingly accessible at any moment to anybody via email, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Text. We’re expected to be at conferences, events, sales meetings and be publicly visible. It’s why sometimes I respond to emails in 5 minutes at other times I go dark for a week at a time.
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.
For starters you have to realize that fund-raising is a sales process. A brochure is an easy out for you in the sales process without being rude. We did some outbound sales & marketing, we responded to some inbound enquiries that came “over the transom” from marketing activities and we responded to RFPs (requests for proposal).
We talked about a lot of great stuff in the video including how to do sales calls and a how a new “culture of writing&# is emerging as a critical skill set in business today. 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.
File this under both Startup Adivce and Sales & Marketing Advice. Journalists don’t know enough about your company before the show, don’t have time for proper research, and you will be competing for their time afterward with 49+ other companies that want them to write about you. - Many other great companies are not. -
Do you find yourself too much in email mode? I regularly shut down my email so that I don’t get pop-up alerts when I’m working. I’ve written about these sales mavericks before. How does the world in Los Angeles intersect differently with venture capital? How can I play to my strengths? I close my Twitter tab.
I know that you can use an email system with this to track my open rate, whether I forwarded the email, the IP address where I read it, whether I was on a mobile device or a wired computer and you can tell who else read the document. What should not be in your deck?
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.
I raced home to put my kids to bed, say hello to my wife and then spend a grueling administrative hour doing email. I know you emailed me and I emailed you back. I always tell people that fund raising is a sales process. But it’s only Tuesday. Wednesday I have 4 companies coming in to talk about their companies.
AOL was just coming online, it was the beginnings of email, and the beginnings of the web. So, I ended up writing that first book, and Bruce helped me with the research, and that was one way we got to know each other before we were even dating. We were writing lots of books, and we'd also started the video publishing business.
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.
Want to take a year pursuing your dream to write a screenplay, travel through Asia, run a triathlon or start your own fashion line? Getting Your Work Schedule on Your Terms – Many people in America sit at their desk much of the day and have email open. And from email we added IM, Facebook and LinkedIn where people contact us.
I’ve remained a skeptic about the BBB and as a result of an email I received a couple of weeks ago from them, I have raised the skepticism threat level. So here’s the email I received: Eric, My name is Chad Ratliffe emailing from the Better Business Bureau. That’s how we do business at Make It Work.
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. email readers, continue here.] In general, grants are made to individuals, companies, businesses, organizations or institutions that are working toward serving the greater good or a greater cause.
You should send “update emails&# that are very short but highlight some of the achievements you made with the intro saying, “since you showed interest in my company I just wanted to provide you a brief update on our progress.&# And I know many stories of Benchmark or similar investors writing term sheets after the first meeting.
You need to be great at something: technology back-end, front-end design, usability, sales, marketing, quantitative analysis, leadership –> whatever. The media eats it up as they always need something to write about. If you don’t believe me he was born with talent, check out this 7 second video of his rhythm from age 3.
Email readers, continue here.] My sales tax payments were due in the next few days, and I didn’t have the money. But I did have an appointment, a sales opportunity the next morning. I made the sale, and paid my debts. Frank Peters made his money writing software for Wall Street. And it wasn’t easy.
By 2012, total sales exceeded 50 million copies and founding band member Roger Waters was cited by Forbes as the second highest paid musician of the year, pulling in $88 million. Pink Floyd recorded DSOTM after a year of writing and performing the material in front of live audiences. Share and Enjoy.
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