Hiring for a startup is always a challenge because the people you may think you want might just be too timid to take the risk of a startup. Actually, that is a good thing—it eliminates people you are going to have to pamper and manage—neither of which you can afford. In about every position, you […]
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
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 »
The single most important question in startup sales is this: is getting in front of the right person 5% of the sales process or 90%. No other question matters more, for the most subtle of reasons, because this one question, almost never verbalized, drives the entire behavior of the sales and sometimes, marketing organization. It
The Single Most Important Question For A Startup Read More »
The most vexing question for a B2B tech startup is how to find the first customer. It’s all different before you have a customer. Really different. Customers are like inherited wealth. If you have $100 million, getting to $125 million is just compound interest. If you are broke, getting to $1 million dollars