caseyjohnellis

Good sales and marketing vs bad sales and marketing

Good sales and marketing:

• Help people win. This makes all of the difference.
• Market and sell your thing with the attitude of wanting to serve your prospects. This makes ALL the difference.
• Do all you can to add value at every touch. 
• Listen to your customer. If you can’t do this then stop selling and hire someone who can.
• Honor the prospect. Put yourself in their shoes. You can only do this if you listen.
• Burn the deal if it’s in the client’s best interest. Integrity almost always cost something in the short terms but never fails to pay off in the long term.
• Help your customers even if it’s not directly connected to a sale.

Bad sales and marketing

• Focus purely on closing.
• Don’t listen (e.g. forgetting names, repeating questions which have already been answered, etc)
• Don’t add value (i.e. gimme gimme gimme kthxbye)
• Be inconsiderate of their needs (e.g. calling a family person during dinner time - or anytime after hours for that matter)
• Sell them something they don’t really need
• Never talk to them again once you’ve closed

Repeat after me: I am not ashamed of sales and marketing

I find that people are often ashamed, almost a little bit embarrassed to talk about sales and marketing. 

“Yeah, we’re going OK, we’re actually… kind of, you know <looks at shoes> thinking about how to get better at marketing.”

OR

“I’m thinking about <looks at shoes> personal branding… <looks up wide eyed and apologetic> Nothing douchey or anything…”

It’s mostly because both are done badly far more often then they are done well. Here’s a thought for all of you wanting/needing to improve their sales and/or marketing:

You can’t get paid without a sale. You can’t make a sale without marketing.

Sales and marketing are a fact of business. If your business has collected any money whatsoever from a customer then you have already committed both the crime of sales and the crime of marketing.

Get used to it. Don’t be ashamed of it. Get better at it.

The hardest thing…

The number one hardest thing when you’re doing a start-up is prioritisation  What’s the one thing that you should be working on that will take your business towards it’s next goal? Define it and put everything else in the queue.

Startmate week 1… The good, bad and ugly.

The fact that I’m writing a weekly wrap-up ad the beginning of the subsequent week should give you an idea of crazy things have been. Our (Serg Belokamen and I) startup Bugcrowd got accepted into Startmate, a mentor driven incubator, and it has been all systems go ever since.

A quick run-down on what Startmate is… they’ve invested a sum of money into our idea and provide mentorship, contacts and general assistance with developing start-ups through their early stages - including acquisition of first customers. At the end of 3 months we do two pitch days to Australian investors then we head over to Silicon Valley for 2 months for a run of meetings, pitch days, and general hustle. The key goal of the Silicon Valley trip is to develop strategic partnerships and raise angel round funding.

So, here are my reflections from week one…

• The Good - We’re getting a lot from the mentors already, but I’d have to say that the key value this week has been from sharing a space with 7 other bright eyed, bushy tailed and very clever teams. The spit-balling and general camaraderie that is springing up is invaluable, especially for someone who has worked solo or in small teams for most of his career.
• The Bad - I’m not sleeping very well at all. Our business is two-sided, and both the people with the skills we sell and those who are wanting to buy them are all over the globe. Managing this is totally doable, but is going to take work to get right.
• The Ugly - My “moderately successful consultancy” which I was running prior to Startmate allowed a lot of time at home with my wife and two kids. Going from 40 hours flexible from home to 60 hours at ATP and another 20 at home has been a difficult adjustment. Again, it’ll take work to get it right, but my family is awesome and I’m totally set on getting that part right.

I’ll try to do this fairly regularly and favor brevity over comprehensiveness. I hope you enjoy!