Loading...
Answers
MenuIf the goal is to be an entrepreneur, given the digital age we live in, what skills should sales professionals develop?
Cold Calling is Dead
Sales Is Changing
How should Sales professionals position themselves to be well equipped for the future?
Answers
All successful sales come from the customer realizing that something of great value is being provided. Therefore, to be an entrepreneur, a person should be searching for something that many people will assess as having great value. In other words, look for something you can design once, and sell over and over again to many people. Techniques such as cold calling may be more or less efficient than the "new" techniques such as social media, mobile marketing, and so on. But none of that matters until you have a product/service that resonates with customers. As a salesperson, you are used to being told "Sell what you have." But as an entrepreneur, you need to be much more interested in "Having what sells."
Copywriting, Sales, Advertising, Marketing
Everything inside and outside of a business revolves around this. Management is important, but marketing trumps everything.
Don't stop taking massive action.
Best of Luck,
Michael T. Irvin
michaelirvin.net
My books are available exclusively through Amazon Books. Check out my book "Copywriting Blackbook of Secrets"
Copywriting, Startups, Internet Entrepreneur, Online Marketing, Making Money
To be an entrepreneur successfully is essentially to be a great communicator and motivator of people, to identify great opportunities and relentlessly pursue them while enlisting other smart people to join you in the adventure.
- I learned more about sales, human psychology and human nature from selling cutlery door-to-door in high-school than just about anything else ( i know sounds crazy)
- The basic notions of how to convince, motivate and "sell" people will apply no matter what technologies come along - so these are crucial
- But if you don't have a strong command of basic technological tools necessary to build a business, the struggle will be harder (email, CRM, CMS, Demand-Gen, Analytics, and the world of software development - Lean, Agile, Scrum, etc)
"Cold calling is dead"
Sure. But look deep inside any major B2B SaaS startup and you'll find a ratio of sales people to developers of about 2:1
So if these companies aren't cold calling, what are they doing?
Well - they are making calls. They're doing a LOT of outbound sales calls actually. The difference is, they aren't cold. They're warm, they were developed through relationship development and referrals.
C++ developers will never feel comfortable picking up the phone and making 10 high quality calls a day, which means the sales professional is as valuable in tech startups as ever.
Because we know that sales skills are critical to scale a tech startup, your personal development should focus on the skills required for the earlier stages of a startup.
Good marketing (copywriting being 90% of what you'll need to master), public speaking, project management (agile literacy), technical literacy.
Happy to chat further on a call
Emotional Intelligence. Outsourcing can handle many headaches that take away from the actual craft of the Entrepreneur.
Focusing on Emotional Intelligence and understanding Human needs and Motivation is the skillset that will feed you for life.
It will also allow you to seamlessly transition into learning any other necessary skill in this digital age with ease because these emotional concepts govern ALL technical/practical techniques from copywriting - advertising to customer retention - lead generation and so forth.
He who knows "How To" is always employed by he who knows "WHY."
Concepts like emotion and motivation are not as sexy as practical strategies yet they are what every strategy is built upon.
Absolutely become a great manager, define the operations you must carry out and when, build an inexpensive outsourcing team to handle the "How To," and focus working ON your business and not so much IN it. :)
Related Questions
-
How was SnapChat able to grow so quickly?
I'm answering your question assuming that you hope to be able to replicate it's own success in your own mobile app. There are a couple of factors responsible for it's growth that are instructive to anyone building a mobile app. "Leveraging the intimacy and privacy of the mobile phone." We now have an *intimate* relationship with our phone like no other device in the history of technology. Every internet company that started before around 2010 has built their core interactions around "the old web" one which was accessed primarily via a browser on a computer. Companies that start with a clean slate, should be building their interactions around how to do whatever the app is supposed to do while leveraging what is unique to people's relationship to their mobile devices. Photo-sharing has become a core part of the way we communicate now. Snapchat built something that provided an experience that leveraged the feeling of privacy and intimacy that is unique to mobile. "Provided an escape from the "maturity" of other online services." Too many parents, aunts, uncles and other "old people" have encroached into the social networks of teens and young people. As a result, they've had a desire to find places to express themselves in places inaccessible by older generations. An important distinction is that it's not just parents and relatives that young people are trying to avoid, but also employers & colleges who are increasingly using "mature" social networks to review applicants. "Leveraged PR even bad PR" The fact that the app got so much press about it being used to sext was perfect PR for the company, as it essentially reinforced the brand experience that it has today. Essentially, "if it's safe enough to send a sext, it's safe for any kind of communication I want to have." And although the safety and security of Snapchat is actually not as advertised, it still enjoys the reputation of having less impact than any primarily web-based service. Building a successful mobile application is one of the hardest challenges to face designers, programmers and entrepreneurs in the history of writing software. Happy to talk to you if you're considering building a mobile app, about what I've learned about the "table stakes" for success.TW
-
What do (bootstrapped) startups offer to new sales hires? Commission only? What are some good examples to keep people motivated and still survive?
Generally bootstrapped startups should avoid salespeople, for a few reasons: a. they typically can't afford the base and overall comp required to attract sales people who can actually sell / or afford to support them with marketing, management, etc b. it will be very difficult to find the rare person with the right mix of sales and startup DNA along with the critical domain knowledge, consequently the startup is likely to settle c. the founders need to be very involved in the selling and customers will demand it That said, if the plan is still to hire a salesperson, find someone who has demonstrated sales success in startups and is excited by the early stage in company building. Create a comp plan heavily leveraged on sales results (unless you are in an industry where 100% commission is a common practice, would recommend against $0 base as this creates the false impression that your hire isn't passing time with one company while looking for another job with a richer comp plan - you want your rep focussed). Sell the vision and opportunity to be part of a growth story. I have written a several blog posts on hiring sales people into start-ups. You might find these useful: http://www.peaksalesrecruiting.com/ceo-question-should-i-learn-to-sell-or-hire-a-sales-person/ http://www.peaksalesrecruiting.com/start-up-sales-and-hiring-advice-dont-stop-selling-once-you-hire-your-first-sales-rep/ http://www.peaksalesrecruiting.com/hiring-start-up-sales-reps/ http://www.peaksalesrecruiting.com/startups-and-salespeople/ Good luck!EB
-
Whats the best way to find commission sales reps?
This is not my specialty, however, I have been in your position many many times -- maybe this will help. If the product is in-tangible, then look for JV partners on the Internet. Try to find an expert that deals with these JV opportunities (like me). If the product is physical, then look for sales organizations that have networks of sales people across the country. You do the deal with the organization and the independent network of sales people sells your product. It's a sweet setup if you can negotiate a margin that works for everyone. Hope that helps - Cheers - NickNP
-
What would be a good answer for describing the size of your company to a potential prospect who might consider you too small to service their account?
What an awesome question! Businesses are running into this issue more frequently that ever, good news is, it can be done. Having worked on projects with oDesk, Fox Television and Wikipedia and having a very very small staff, it's certainly possible. Here's how I say it in our pitches to larger organizations: "Tractive West provides tailored video production services to organizations of all sizes. We have developed a distributed workflow using the latest digital tools. We leverage our small creative and management team with a world wide network of creative professionals, that means we can rapidly scale to meet the demands of any project while keeping our infrastructure and overhead lightweight and sustainable." Cheers and best of luck.SM
-
What is a good/average conversion rate % for an e-commerce (marketplace model) for customers who add to cart through to purchase order.
There is quite a bit of information available online about eCommerce conversions rates. According to a ton of sources, average visitor-to-sale conversion rates vary from 1-3%. This does not mean the Furniture conversions will be the same. The bigger problem is that visitor-to-sale conversions are not a good data point to use to measure or tune your eCommerce business. All business have some unique friction factors that will affect your final conversion rate. It's very important to understand each of these factors and how to overcome them. The best way to measure and optimize is to take a conversion funnel approach. Once you have defined your funnel you can optimize each conversion rate to better the total effect. For example: Top of the funnel: - All web site visitors, 100,000 / month First conversion: View a product page, 50% of all visitors Second Conversion: Add to Cart, 10% of people who view products Final Conversion: Complete Checkout, 80% of people who put items in a cart In this example we see that only 10% of people who actually view products put them in to a cart, but 80% of those people purchase. If you can figure out why visitors are not adding items to their cart and fix the issue to increase the conversion rate, revenue should increase significantly because of the high checkout rate. You can use free tools like Google Analytics to give you a wealth of information about your site visitor and their behavior or there are some great paid tools as well.DM
the startups.com platform
Copyright © 2025 Startups.com. All rights reserved.