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Learn ways to sell to big companies as a startup. Slides taken from the Sales for Startups class taught by Yesware CEO, Matthew Bellows, at Intelligent.ly to entrepreneurs, sales professionals and startup team members.
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Sales for Startups
MATTHEW BELLOWS
@mbellows
So you just finished telling me about why you all came here to talk about sales. Wait. You, with your whole
future ahead of you, want to do SALES? You want to be this guy?
When Daniel Pink asked 7,000 people about what words they most closely associated with salespeople, here are the answers he got! You
really want to be yucky?
Salespeople are no longer the gatekeepers to the information that their customers need. Salespeople are facing more knowledgeable buyers who have frequently already narrowed their purchase decisions significantly. This dynamic makes just getting in front of decision makers even harder than before. But it also makes closing a deal more difficult because in some cases, the buyer knows more about your competition that you do!
To overcome this challenge, salespeople have to be more helpful, more insightful and more consultative than before. We have to have to respond instantly to interest, and we have to work harder at building long term relationships, because genuine trust can’t be commoditized.
That’s the first big trend in the sales profession. The information asymmetry that salespeople used to leverage is gone or fading fast. We have to adapt or survive.
Source: David Skok h0p://www.forentrepreneurs.com/sales-‐complexity/
But before you get into it, or as you are considering what company to take a job for, figure out the sales strategy.
Are you going to have a sales team? Do you need one?
How much will your product cost?
Who are you going to sell to? How many customers are there? What are they like?
How hard is it to sell? How much value is there? What pain does it solve? How desperate are the buyers to have your product?
/Prospect = $ x % x /Close
Sometimes in the middle of the day it’s hard to remember that there actually is a person on the other end of the line or the email… a human being with a past, with parents, with a whole huge life outside of yours.
Forgetting about that makes your job much much harder.
The Cold Call
1. Opening
The Cold Call
1. Opening2. Credibilty
The Cold Call
1. Opening2. Credibilty
3. The Ask
The Cold Call
1. Opening2. Credibilty
3. The Ask4. Closing
The Cold Call
Finding a Champion
Signing any customer requires that you find an employee who loves what you do. You don’t have an opportunity until you find that person.
Converting Darth Vader into the cause of light and goodness. When you identify your enemy, go right at them. Ignoring them does no good. Hear their objections. Respond in time – no rush. Prove over the course of many conversations that you are someone they can work with, can
trust. If you can turn someone from darkness into light, you earn yourself a powerful ally.
Failing to CloseThe Second Best Answer is a Quick No – It hurts. It stings. There’s nothing good about getting rejected on a deal except the fact that it didn’t take too long to get rejected on a deal. There’s precious little you can do to push the string towards a decision. But you can respect the folks who decide quickly, and make a note to come back to them after a while.
Two things you can do:
1. Figure Out WHY2. Drop it and Move On
You have to figure out which of those two is the right for you every time.
Just getting someone to sign here is not good enough!
It’s Not Closed Until the cash is in the building! – The only thing worse than getting told “no” is having a “yes” fall apart after the fact. Strange and unexpected things happen in corporations, and you’ll never
really know what’s going on. Keep driving, keep active and in touch until the deal is really and truly done.
Matthew Bellowsma&[email protected] 617 744 9120
