Post on 26-Jan-2017
PRESENTED BY:
Myths & Truths - Building a Product
NOVEMBER 20, 2014PRESENTED BY:
PRESENTERS:
JERROD BAILEY
PARTNER & PRACTICE LEAD, TALLWAVE
JON HALL
DIRECTOR OF SALES DELIVERY, TALLWAVE
AGENDA
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Myth 1: You need a product before you can start sellingMyth 2: You need sales experience to sell Myth 3: Finding new prospects is a networking and phone
calling grindMyth 4: You don’t have enough time to sell on top of
everything elseMyth 5: An expensive sales guy with a good rolodex is
what you need to growMyth 6: A great product will sell itself
INTRODUCTION
JERROD BAILEYPartner Tallwave LLC
15 yr start-up operator and enterprise. 3 start-ups, 3 exits.
Works with Tallwave portfolio and client companies to build scalable systems for growth (but hacks his way to get there).
In a previous life:● UUNET (first Tier 1 ISP), sold to
MFS for $2B● Virtela ($70M venture backed,
sold to NTT for $520M)
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INTRODUCTION
Jon HallDirector of Sales Delivery, Tallwave
15 year tech sales leader at Revana (Built scalable sales teams for companies like IBM, Sony, Toshiba and Hewlett Packard.)
Jon knows that successful sales teams are not built overnight. It begins with scaleable sales systems and wrapping them around the right talent. Jon builds sales systems for Tallwave portfolio companies and clients.
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MYTH #1: YOU NEED A PRODUCT BEFORE YOU CAN START SELLING
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MISCONCEPTION
“You don’t want to sell something that isn’t ready.”
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REALITY #2If your customer won’t buy off on your concept, why would
you go build the actual software?
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• Demonstrate market demand for potential investors. Heck, demonstrate it for yourself!
• If you’ve got a real value proposition, they’ll gladly wait. They’ll even help you develop the idea.
TRUTH: Sell as early as you have a concept that someone can react to
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Simple Landing Page Clickable Prototype
Cheap or Free Acquisition
Explainer Video
TIPS:
1. Cheap Prototyping Tools: InVision, UXPin, Solidify, proto.io
2. Low-cost Outsourcing: Elance, fiverr, or oDesk
3. Landing Page: Unbounce or Launchrock4. Explainer Video: GoAnimate
5. Finding Leads: PPC (Google Adwords) or LinkedIn prospecting
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MISCONCEPTION
“I’m the [marketer, developer]. It’s up to a salesperson to sell.”
Fear, Tunnel Vision
REALITY:No one believes in the product more than you.
If you can’t sell it… who can?
The only thing you can count on is that you will have at least one major pivot before your idea sticks. How quickly do you
want to get there?
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THE TRUTH: The best startup salespeople are engineers and teachers
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“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps
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Image: http://blog.healthjobsnationwide.com/different-types-of-therapy-jobs/
The Best Startup Salespeople Act Like Anthropologists and Psychologists
TIPS:
1. Spend 90% of your meeting asking questions. Listen.
2. No more than 10 slides3. Explain your concept in a single picture (who is
your buyer, their current reality, and their future reality with your product?)
4. Leave jargon, features, at home. Offer up outcomes and ask if each is valuable
5. Layer in 2 or 3 key facts or anecdotes to support your most important assumptions
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MYTH #3: FINDING NEW PROSPECTS IS A NETWORKING AND PHONE CALL GRIND
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MISCONCEPTION
“If you’re going to sell, you have to pick up the phone.”
“These are strangers. I can’t even begin to guess how I would get in front of them!”
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REALITYProspecting has fundamentally changed in
the last 2 years. LinkedIn and Apps have hyper-connected us and created better
pathways to discover, meet and sell.
• Super List Building: Use
Boolean expressions in
LinkedIn “Advanced
Search”
• The mechanics of
connecting and asking for a
meeting can be outsourced
or automated
THE TRUTH:YOU CAN FIND INTERESTED CUSTOMERS
TOMORROW FOR CHEAP (OR FREE)
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MYTH #4: YOU DON’T HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO SELL ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE
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REALITY #1
Investors look for traction and your ability to make progress. You can’t afford not to sell.
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Sales is, in fact, a numbers game.
(But you can automate most of it.)
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• Specialize your sales. Break out low-level functions and find ways to automate or outsource them• Building and
Maintaining Lists• Prospecting• Scheduling• Writing Quotes /
Proposals• Follow-up / Nurture
THE TRUTH: WITH A MIX OF CHEAP TOOLS AND OVERSEAS RESOURCES, YOU CAN AUTOMATE YOUR WHOLE SALES FUNNEL
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TIPS:
1. Create great lists of your target customers using Import.io, SalesLoft, Spyderbook, HiringSolved, and BuiltWith
2. Prospecting via LinkedIn, Twitter, Email doesn’t require you to do the work. Outsource it (e.g. ODesk)
3. Automate your prospecting with tools like Socedo and Ofunnel
4. Nurture with Hubspot or Infusionsoft
If you have 2 hours of “prospecting time” per week. Every minute should be spent actually talking to prospects. Nothing else.
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MYTH #5: AN EXPENSIVE SALES GUY WITH A GOOD ROLODEX IS WHAT YOU
NEED TO GROW
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TRUTH: A SALES SYSTEM BEATS AN EXPENSIVE SALESPERSON EVERY TIME
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1. 95% OF A TYPICAL SALESPERSON’S “NETWORK” IS OLD, IRRELEVANT OR NOT IN A POSITION TO BUY
2. Having a compelling product and a method to expose that product to many buyers is the only sustainable path to success.
3. If most people have only 1 or 2 really good contacts, don’t hire them. Rather, get good at asking for referrals. BONUS: Write a Referral Agreement.
Sales System vs Sales Guy
Prospecting Qualifying Closing
15 hrs/week
15 hrs/week
10 hrs/week
Total Cost: $125K
$125K
Sales System vs Sales Guy
50 hrs/week
233%
Prospecting Qualifying Closing
20 hrs/week
33%
20 hrs/week
100%
Total Cost: $95K24%
$80K
$15K
Sales System vs Sales Guy
Prospecting Qualifying Closing
90 hrs/week
500%
40 hrs/week
160%
40 hrs/week
300%
$80K$15K
$15K
$45K
Total Cost: $155K24%
TIPS:
• Every meeting should end in, “who do you know that would be interested in hearing this?”
• Don’t hire your first VP of Sales until you’ve achieved $1M in revenue
• Systematize your sales process. Start by specializing your prospecting function.
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MISCONCEPTION
“Our plan is to completely automate the marketing and sales process. We’ll have a self-serve revenue machine with no sales
reps at all.”
Wishful thinking, distorted perception
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“Inbound-only marketing is like waiting
for the phone to ring” -Matt Heinz, Heinz Marketing
Image: http://smsrd.com/blog/making-the-phone-ring/
While 60% of your buyer’s decision is made before they talk to someone1, they still want to talk to
someone.
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(1) Source: Forbes 2013 http://www.forbes.com/sites/gyro/2013/01/07/the-disappearing-sales-process/
http://icmoly.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/online-learning/who-is-icm-girl-smiling-2/
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Hundreds of leads per month through SEO, Banner Ads and other digital methods.
~30 Inside Sales Reps
30% close rate
TIPS:
• Learn as fast and as early as possible• You can only learn by reaching out to strangers• Think in terms of systems, set them up, and let
them run
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A 2-WEEK SALES ACCELERATION AND SYSTEMATIZATION
SPRINT
Accelerate consistent revenue
Make yourself and your team 3x more efficient and effective
Offload 90% of menial sales work
Sell more, with less friction and fewer objections
Meet real prospects and see how well your sales machine works
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