SweatStart

I’ve been working on “packaging” my Sweat on various topics. One topic is on “cold calling for startups.”

The concept alone makes a lot of sales and non-sales people shudder.  “I’m not a sales guy. I hate cold calling, I hate cold callers…I could never do it…”

My reply to this type of initial response is always simple. “But do you like revenue?  Are you entrepreneur?” “Yes, of course” is the answer I typically get and thus the journey begins, to becoming hunters who feed the tribe against all odds, going up against the scariest of beasts hiding in the deepest of the darkest forests and around every corner…

I know for myself that cold calling is one of the hardest things to do in the world. Equipped with the right tools, attitude and value proposition it can be enjoyable…because closing is fun. Winning is a kick.  With a full pipeline of qualified opportunities, you will close if what you have or eventually find a real value proposition.

Over the past couple of years,  I’ve come across many startups that have no idea where to start or how to begin.  Interestingly, being entrepreneurs they usually are 80% of the way already there. The rest is just attitude, technique and practice.

I’ve worked with a number of start-ups to get sales started, and I’m creating this “SweatStart” to reduce the amount of time it takes for me to help these entrepreneurs and technologists.  I’m also doing it to get exposure to this particular kind of sweat I have to invest, which will increase my deal flow and its quality.

I’m in the process of formulating how I’ll do this. Still kind of defining the best approach.  A few great resources I’ll be referencing:

Close the Deal - A great book with example scripts and techniques to cold call and sell (part of the training that I received at Oracle).

Innovators Traction - A great salesman blog written by Steve Browne (a sweatinvestor) who refined his sales approach at companies like Oracle, IBM, etc.  He started as as developer so he is the poster boy for anyone who starts out with the notion that technologists or entreprenuers can’t put on the pure sales hat when they need to, or when they want to triple their salary. His no non-sense approach is great showing how you can avoid the biggest sin in sales, “wasting time.” I linked to my favorite post of his above, which walks someone through his 10 Steps of the sales process and forecasting.

..more to come…

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Thanks Kli for sending this.  Great read to think about, and review multiple times.

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Ok, so you’ve filled out your SweatInvestor profile, now how do you set yourself up for success without investing a lot of time?

There are many ways.  One of the ideas I’m starting to solidify is the idea of The Deck, which we’ll call a “SweatStart”.  A 5 to 15 slide deck that “productizes” a bite size piece of the board level value you have to offer someone that requires very little of our time.

A deck that you could link to or send to anyone that needs your help (i.e., doesn’t require your time, scales) or that you could send and then present over the phone or in person between 30-90 minutes (i.e., when you see an opportunity that is worth investing your time).

I’m working on a Sales for Startups deck that I’ll later use as an example. We’ll also create a SweatStart workshop to get more feedback and to refine the idea.

Walter R. Roth

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