A little less than 3 years ago, I decided I wanted to become an entrepreneur.
If I’m truly honest, the catalyst for this pursuit wasn’t motivated by seeing young people accomplish amazing things, but rather serious dissatisfaction with my first job.
My first job in a nutshell:
I was bored as sh*t. I felt like my ideas were never taken seriously and my capacity to create progress within the business was limited by bureaucracy.
I felt like I was wasting my life. It was terrible.
I wanted something more fulfilling I wanted to have ownership of something. I wanted to feel the tangible impact created by my efforts. I wanted to be part of something bigger than myself and be excited about work each day.
These feelings …
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A little over a year ago I met Ryan Jeffery, Vice President of Business Development at Belly, a startup focused on enriching the loyalty experience for both local businesses and consumers.
When we met I could tell Ryan was a sharp guy…and I’ve been really impressed by the growth that Belly has achieved in the beast that is local. Naturally I thought he’d be fun to do an interview with : )
In this interview we talk about:
How they initially pitched and sold local businesses in MVP mode (WARNING: includes ipad glue stories)
The first thing they did after they got their very first customer
How they scaled once they had initial product/market fit
Insight into their hybrid inside/outside sales distribution strategy (and why this …
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Every month I put put a business development newsletter that features jobs, tools, articles, and the fan favorite “BD Tactic of the month”….
Since putting out my last one, 3 business development jobs and one internship have been sent my way that I thought people would benefit from knowing about. They are:
Skillshare – Business Development Manager (New York)
Awe.sm – Manager/Director of Business Development & Sales (SF)
Flurry – Senior Director Publisher Relations West (SF)
If you want to check out some old issues of BDNewsletter that 500+ others have enjoyed, feel free to check them out below:
BD #7: A Better Way to Ask for Meetings, Channel Partnerships, and 2 BD Jobs
BD #6: A Better CHECKING IN email, 7 BD Jobs, and …
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I recently had the chance to chat with Andrew Dumont, director of BD at SEOmoz.
I’ve been following him from a distance after discovering his blog so it was awesome to get some facetime to rap BD, life, and other coolness.
In this interview we talk about:
His introduction to working in tech at the ripe age of 18 years young and various startup experience since then (Tatango -> Seesmic -> SEOmoz)
How to manage business development relationships when you’re company pivots…a lot
What the heck business development at SEOmoz actually means
How he evaluates channel partnerships and the expected conversion rate he anticipates for channel deals. A lot of startup founders need to understand this if they pursue this distribution strategy
The greatest …
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A lot of people in my Skillshare classes ask me whether you should send LinkedIn messages when reaching out to prospects?
Short answer: avoid this at all costs.
In this video below I discuss WHY reaching out someone on LinkedIn hurts your chances of getting a response and the framework I use to determine which method of communication is best for engaging prospects.
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In general, I almost always approach people via email because that is where people I do business with interact with contacts they know and trust. That’s the bucket you want to be in – not the random people from Indonesia asking you to join their mastermind group of 28,678 “strategic consultants.”
Using one of the methodologies in this post on …
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I recently talked lifehacks, BD, WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER LINKEDIN MESSAGE SOMEONE etc at the New York Lifehack Meetup. Thanks for having me Sam Hysell!
Below you’ll find some video fun where we talk about:
How I got involved with SP
How to take the 80/20 approach to hack networking (shhhh…don’t tell anyone)
Ways to “create value” for people when trying to network with the big boys
The art of “creating serendipity” and how I got Keith Ferrazzi, author of my favorite book Never Eat Alone to buy me dinner
How to give people a personal update on your life without it being a “ME, ME, ME” fest
What the law of reciprocity is and how to leverage the heck out of it to convince someone to meet you …
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</head>&amp;lt;img height=”1″ width=”1″ alt=”” style=”display:none” src=”https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=1391796177709651&amp;amp;amp;ev=NoScript” /&amp;gt;A prominent nemisis of opportunity and value creation is being incompetent at following up with people. I want to share my system for remember to write followup emails.
But first…
I want to deflate the hesitancy around following up with people if they haven’t responded to you.
I don’t care whether we’re talking about doing a business development deal or asking someone cute to meet you for a bebida alcohólica, just because someone doesn’t get back to you doesn’t mean they’re not interested.
Maybe they were going to get back to you, but forgot to respond. Maybe your message got lost in their inbox. Maybe they’re dog got sick and they declared email bankruptcy. …
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There’s a right and a wrong way to cold email a company when you’re unsure who the decision maker is. How you approach this can literally be the difference between getting a deal vs. an onry reply to refrain from contacting the company again…
People ask me this question all the time:
If I don’t know who the decision maker is, is it cool to cold email multiple people who might be the decision maker at the same time?
This is a suboptimal approach.
The first thing that’s important to understand is that people within the same company talk. When you carpet bomb multiple people with a sales email you’re doing a few things:
signaling that you’re not sure who the correct person …
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