51–60 of 115 posts
Connections are important but in some areas you may have to hire a lobbyist to get them, while in other areas you just need to show up at a trade convention and chat people up.
The advice I'll give is based on my experience as cofounder of an early online banking technology company back in the mid-90s. We started with three people in rented class-C space and over seven years did high six-figure deals with large and small banks including Fleet, Bank of America, Citi and others. There's not really a "how it works" for this. If I had to tell you how it works I'd say: it works by you making fri…
and if you dont have any of these things dont pursue the idea! if this is your only and big idea that you have to get married to so you can “ strike it big” then you are already playing at a disadvantage The rest of us, your competition, have an idea every other week and just revisit them when they are economical its not “strike while the iron is hot” its have 100 irons to begin with
I am the CTO of a “unicorn” B2B tech company that focuses almost exclusively on the global 2000. Sales are 95% about relationships and 5% about Product. If you want to sell into Citibank, you go hire the one guy or girl who previously sold $20M of X to Citi, who golfs with the VP of Procurement and goes to Billy Joel concerts with the VP of infrastructure operations. Once you hire this person it feels like cheating,…
But the problem still is, how do you get that guy. There are so many people who claim to be that guy and few who actually are (and would be willing to switch).
Smart people won't switch companies just to earn a more money. Strong relationships are worth more than a bigger paycheck and while you might retain many relationships you certainly can't retain all when switching companies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
and if you dont have any of these things dont pursue the idea! if this is your only and big idea that you have to get married to so you can “ strike it big” then you are already playing at a disadvantage The rest of us, your competition, have an idea every other week and just revisit them when they are economical its not “strike while the iron is hot” its have 100 irons to begin with
Just curious: Did you ever strike on any iron?
So the economical nature of that reality became the idea behind our “advisory” business, exhibit a
Some terms to get you started: - outside sales executive (e.g., the person who visits the customer, they typically work from coworking or home-offices) - inside sales executive (e.g., a sales support person, typically doesn't travel and works at coworking or home-office full-time) - outside sales engineer (e.g., a customer-facing technical person who answers questions and helps sell solutions with the sales exec) - m…
Reading answers on this thread makes me wonder are those sales techniques really healthy to industry as a whole? No one questions that, and yet normalize probably unhealthy ways of selling utilities. "who golfs with the VP of Procurement" .. that's how corruption works as well, isn't it? Is that natural?
The advice I'll give is based on my experience as cofounder of an early online banking technology company back in the mid-90s. We started with three people in rented class-C space and over seven years did high six-figure deals with large and small banks including Fleet, Bank of America, Citi and others. There's not really a "how it works" for this. If I had to tell you how it works I'd say: it works by you making fri…
Read this https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/enterpris...
Not sure why this is so low on the page, as it was incredibly helpful. I even went to the author's archive directory [1] so I could read his other posts about sales and life running/selling a SaaS company. He is candid and knowledgeable. Definitely bookmarking — thanks for the link! 1: https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/
Probably low because I was in a rush and didn't explain the content at all.
Some terms to get you started: - outside sales executive (e.g., the person who visits the customer, they typically work from coworking or home-offices) - inside sales executive (e.g., a sales support person, typically doesn't travel and works at coworking or home-office full-time) - outside sales engineer (e.g., a customer-facing technical person who answers questions and helps sell solutions with the sales exec) - m…
I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about the RFP process. For a small product (maybe Jobs would have called it a feature) like a Chatbot, your best hope if you want to hit the enterprise elephants is to find a “digital transformation” RFP, give a really strong reply for the inevitable chatbot feature in round 1, then get rolled in as a “joint proposal” for future rounds with one of the big boys (Accenture, IBM…