261–269 of 269 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You guys are a security consulting firm from what I see. What products did you create for that?
That's just one (the main) side of things; the specific piece of software I mention is in another market.
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It depends which industry you pick - but often the problems are over-hyped. It's true; I had the same trepidation you talk about when first having to face doing sales... and at the start it can be a disaster ;) but you can soon pick up the tips & tricks needed to sell to corporates. In fact; as hackers we are actually at an advantage selling to corporates, so long as you "get" the process, because they tend to be "at…
If you have any pointers to advice on how to go about this kind of selling, that would be very interesting.
The few things that spring to mind:
Be polite but persistent
Procurement people at corporates are used to really pushy sales people; so if you barely make any effort you won't get through at all :)
Judge who you are talking too
Most people you talk to won't be able to give you a "yes", get past them as fast as you can (I usually just ask straight out to speak to their superior/boss etc.), they are there mostly as a filter. Also consider what sort of firm you're calling - in a 50+ person company it is likely to be a specific department who buy things (even if it is just an individual), below that the person probably has a different day-to-day job. I've had a lot of success, when talking to smaller firms, with the line "lets just drop all the corporate nonsense, we're both small firms and there is no need for me to make this the normal pain in the neck".
Forget all the marketing nonsense
You'll see a lot of "marketing best practices"; I mostly ignore them, they are designed for a company with a number of sales people to normalise the sales routines. You're hacking the sales routine, so take it naturally.
I particularly advise avoiding the template emails that you stick a name in front of... keep the templated stuff to short paragraphs in your emails & material you attach (i.e. PDF's) and try to write an honest "personal" note.
Honesty does get noticed BTW, it can set you apart from the usual inundation of marketing they get.
Be open to adaption, but have a firm limit
I once committed us to a normal sale but "with a few tweaks", it took me the best part of a month to get the tweaks in place. :) Accomodating companies requirements gets you a good name, but really consider if it is worthwhile, and be happy to say no.
Be prepared to walk away
You can't sell every time. And if you are desperate to sell then they can take advantage of it! Either by getting impractical modifications (see above point) or drumming down your price. Either that or they are just not interested, and you end up sounding desperate and silly.
Invest in CRM
Biggest piece of advice IMO; it is so so so so so easy to forget who you contacted & about what. It might take you weeks to find the right person to talk to at a firm, but in 6 months when you try to upsell them the new product you don't want to have to do all that work again :) Plus I had a silly incident a while back where I kept emailing the same introductory email to a poor CEO; I think he got it about 86 times before calling to ask me to stop :)
Call the CEO
Doesn't work all the time, but sometimes (particularly in smaller firms) you can get things moving (and seal a sale) by calling the CEO. It takes a bit of balls and a fast pitch (or social engineering) to stop them hanging up :)
My favourite line was "X suggested I call you about this product, Y, we're selling you so you can have an idea of how it will improve your business"
Where X is someone in the middle of the food chain who has, at some point, said "you need to talk to my boss". :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's just one (the main) side of things; the specific piece of software I mention is in another market.
Would love to see a blog post on how you guys did this. And also some of the other industries your boss mentioned :)
There are loads of industries/areas to disrupt, a quick list from the top of my head:
employment databases,auditing,ISO,internal communications,document control,security control,anything government,caterers (booking systems, big area)
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People are taught to focus on a market they understand, specifically themselves if nothing else. Women, on the other hand, are hard to understand, even to other women.
really? http://www.neosprockets.com/index.php/2010/01/chick-flick-ge...
(actually this does seem to work in the Harlequin romance corner of publishing - if you can apply this to a startup, more power to you)
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really? http://www.neosprockets.com/index.php/2010/01/chick-flick-ge...
If that worked, then movie studios would just churn out chick movies with guaranteed profits aplenty. (actually this does seem to work in the Harlequin romance corner of publishing - if you can apply this to a startup, more power to you)
http://www.cracked.com/article_19012_5-hollywood-secrets-tha...
Make no mistake, a big factor in the creation / encouragement of recent bubbles has been super easy monetary policy that provides cheap and easy credit. In '00 we had a market crash after a dramatic run up of stocks in general and tech in specific. In 1998-1999 rates were low and credit was easily available [1]. As we led up to the millennium changeover ("Y2K") unprecedented amounts of short term capital were made av…
Good post. It seems common for participants in an industry undergoing a bubble to concoct elaborate industry-specific theories to explain a sudden influx of new money when the real cause is, well, exactly that: a sudden influx of new money. Unfortunately, we've been trained to correlate the numbers in our bank accounts with actual value, but the link has been all but severed for a long time. It seems unbelievable tha…
Make no mistake, a big factor in the creation / encouragement of recent bubbles has been super easy monetary policy that provides cheap and easy credit. In '00 we had a market crash after a dramatic run up of stocks in general and tech in specific. In 1998-1999 rates were low and credit was easily available [1]. As we led up to the millennium changeover ("Y2K") unprecedented amounts of short term capital were made av…
Good post. It seems common for participants in an industry undergoing a bubble to concoct elaborate industry-specific theories to explain a sudden influx of new money when the real cause is, well, exactly that: a sudden influx of new money. Unfortunately, we've been trained to correlate the numbers in our bank accounts with actual value, but the link has been all but severed for a long time. It seems unbelievable tha…
I don't know about the rest of the world, but we sure are in a bubble here at Hacker News. There seems to be a real disconnect between what people want to build/invest in and what people in the real world actually need and want to pay for. Just as sample of what I've witnessed in the past few years: Ask HN: How do you like my file sharing app? Ask HN: How do you like my social app for niche ? Ask HN: How do you like…
This is very true. I can give another example(maybe bit-offtopic for HN). A very good friend of mine worked in IT for like 10 yrs. He was quite good programmer, CTO etc. One day he decided to radically change his carrer and opened... 5 Subways in Eastern Europe (he is originally from there). FFW 2 yrs => his restaurants making him $400-500k/yr, he spends zero time managing them and just focused on opening new ones. H…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you have any pointers to advice on how to go about this kind of selling, that would be very interesting.
There's no real secret to any of it (that's the first pointer). The few things that spring to mind: Be polite but persistent Procurement people at corporates are used to really pushy sales people; so if you barely make any effort you won't get through at all :) Judge who you are talking too Most people you talk to won't be able to give you a "yes", get past them as fast as you can (I usually just ask straight out to…