Archive | December, 2012

Things Startup Founders Should Understand About Channel Partnerships

Many startup founders are deathly afraid of building their own sales team. They default to channel partnerships to try and get distribution. Sigh.     For those unfamiliar with the term, a channel partnership is when a person or organization sells products on behalf of another company. An example of this is how Duda Mobile [...]

Continue Reading Comments { 1 }

One Way to Write A Powerful Cold Email

The tactic I’m about to share is not only for sales and business development professionals; it’s a unique strategy that can literally be used to start an email dialogue with anyone who has an online presence.   One of the most important things in writing an effective cold email is to keep it short. However, [...]

Continue Reading Comments { 38 }

Guerilla Tactics: How to Find A Decision Maker Part 2

In the first part of this post, I shared how calling for a former employee can help you find a decision maker. Here’s a few other strategies to isolate the right contact at a large company. Use Implicit Data on LinkedIn Let’s revert back to the conundrum of there being 12 people in the marketing [...]

Continue Reading Comments { 4 }

Guerilla Tactics: How to Find A Decision Maker Part 1

Awhile back I wrote a post called Less Obvious Ways to Find A Decision Maker. I’ve discovered a few additional tactics since then that thought I’d share in a multi part post: Call For Someone Who No Longer Works There   Calling into an 1000+ person company and asking the operator who manages a particular [...]

Continue Reading Comments { 5 }

How to Ask Someone if They’re A Decision Maker

One of the first mistakes I made when I initially started doing BD was how’d I’d ask if someone if they were the decision maker. “So X, would you say that you’re the decision maker for this.” “Yes” was the answer I received 95% of the time. I’d say the number of actual decision makers [...]

Continue Reading Comments { 3 }

What Not To Do When Cold Calling

Last week I found myself doing a bunch of cold calling into 1,000+ person companies so I thought I’d share some quick tips specifically on what not do when cold calling. What Not to Do When Cold Calling from Scott Britton A few key takeaways from this presentation: The goal of a cold call is [...]

Continue Reading Comments { 7 }

Storytelling in Sales and How to Do It

One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned over the past year is how powerful storytelling in sales can be. I always try to incorporate stories when I’m  describing a product for a few reasons: Humanizing Myself When I’m communicating with a new acquaintance (especially when I’m pitching), I try to humanize myself as much as possible. [...]

Continue Reading Comments { 6 }

4 Things That Help Me Create Habits

Joel Gascoigne, a co-founder of Buffer, wrote a post on habit last week that I really enjoyed. I thought I’d provide some color on my experience and process for habit formation. Like Joel, I’m constantly trying to create habits that will push me closer to achieving my goals and becoming the person I want to [...]

Continue Reading Comments { 7 }