A raw startup has a very different goal than a mature or semi-mature tech company. The raw startup must find that early adopter/innovator who can launch it as both a customer and non-equity funding source. Often, the raw startup gets hooked up with the brain-dead marketing types who try to help it “establish a brand” […]
Marketing Without An Edge—Disaster for the Raw Startup Read More »
Every day we see more over-funded startups, those with millions of VC dollars, hiring brain dead sales managers who do nothing but measure the number of emails or the number of weekly sales calls a rep makes. Metrics-driven-management is stupid incarnate. A good enterprise rep will manage a territory as an organic whole. He or
Territory Management Beats Useless Metrics Every Time Read More »
There are too many technologies chasing too few real opportunities and the result is a dramatically lower intelligence in enterprise sales campaigns. This results in a preponderance of metrics driven activity, for the sake of activity, in over-funded VC invested firms. If a sales manager has reps who are lower skilled, one could train them
Many raw startups get some VC funding and immediately apply steroids to their sales efforts. They hire those 3-5 former ERP reps who have no business even visiting a startup, and off they go. These reps usually fail unless the product sells itself. In those cases, they will look like heroes, but that is the
A Raw Startup Needs a Franchise Player, Not a Sales Force Read More »
There is something called the philosophical fallacy of composition. It goes something like this: the hotel is large, therefore it must have large rooms. This obvious fallacy has an enterprise sales rep equivalent: the sales rep worked for IBM, HP, Oracle, SAP, VMware, EMC and did really well, so they must be great tech sales
Enterprise Sales Reps Are Worse Than Useless for the Raw Startup—NEVER Hire One! Read More »
A raw tech startup should not be selling to any market. Any “market” is too big and the sales cycles are long, painful and often fruitless. The raw startup sells only to the early adopter, the innovator. The raw startup has built some sort of differentiated offering that solves a problem or opens a door to new opportunity. In
The Innovator Is Your First Customer and They Are Looking For You Read More »
Raw startups, especially if the founders are technically inclined, have this notion they need to pay for expensive marketing. Probably this comes from them knowing nothing about marketing thus feeling personally insufficient in this area. Perhaps this makes them want to overcompensate. Marketing for a raw startup is the equivalent of taking your money, leaving
Most Technology Marketing is Wasted: Save Your Money Read More »
No matter who you are, no matter what your technology, you are looking for the innovator and early adopter. You are looking for the customer looking for you. Let that sink in. Who would be looking for you if nobody knows who you are? Finding the customer who does not know you, but has a
One of the most fun marketing challenges today, perhaps the greatest for a raw startup is that customers are overwhelmed with marketing messages from vendor marketing machines. There are just too many vendors chasing too few buyers. The raw startup cannot hope to compete with this kind of marketing machinery. And there, is where the
A raw startup, one that may have zero customers or just a few, is not a small HP or IBM. It is a fundamentally different entity with dynamics that are completely foreign to people who have thrived in high infrastructure environments. It is now almost a truism that large company sales and marketing people fail
Why Big Company Enterprise Reps Fail At Startups Read More »