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PRESENTED BY: Myths & Truths - Building a Product NOVEMBER 20, 2014 PRESENTED BY: PRESENTERS: JERROD BAILEY PARTNER & PRACTICE LEAD, TALLWAVE JON HALL DIRECTOR OF SALES DELIVERY, TALLWAVE

Myths & Truths About Building a Sales System

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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

WWW.TALLWAVE.COM/SPRINGBOARD [email protected]

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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THE MYTHS

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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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MYTH #2: YOU NEED SALES EXPERIENCE TO SELL

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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.

1-3% Open Rate

1-30% Open Rate

TRADITIONAL INBOXES

ALTERNATIVE INBOXES

80-90% Open Rate

• 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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MISCONCEPTION

“Selling Takes a lot of Time”

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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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MISCONCEPTION: “YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR CONNECTIVITY”

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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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MYTH #6: A GREAT PRODUCT WILL SELL ITSELF

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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

TALLWAVE.COM/SPRINGBOARD [email protected]

PRESENTED BY:

Myths & Truths - Building a Product

OCTOBER 29, 2014PRESENTED BY:

PRESENTERS:

JERROD BAILEY

VP, SALES TEAM, TALLWAVE

[email protected]

JON HALL

DIR, SALES TEAM, TALLWAVE, [email protected]