(1) Our cold calls aren't completely cold. We dig/farm for people or businesses we honestly believe we can help! It's not too hard to find someone losing out on links or driving traffic away from their site who we can help.
(2) Each call is a learning experience (ref: lean startup?). We are not pressing for sales (as you may infer from our pipeline at the bottom of the article), but looking for their pain... setting up a demo (hopefully)... then selling if there is a GOLDEN fit.
I'm not a business person, what does "inside sales" mean, the "inside" part?
But I can say as someone with some decision-making input into purchases for an 'enterprise', I _love_ it when I get to talk to an actual dev/engineer. The less I have to talk to a non-engineer salesperson, and the more I get to talk to an engineer, in fact the more likely you are to make a sale to me (assuming your product is actually good).
Early devs to a startup should always be ready and able to sell. It's not just enough to hire a dev expert in their discipline, but rather all early startup employees need to be well rounded enough to help in the sales process. All things being equal, dev that can sell > dev that can't sell. Startups fail most often from market risk vs technical risk. The early sales process is a key component to finding product-market fit.
How many people are doing this at once? Farming 100 leads by identifying possible companies and finding a good contact is about 10 hours of work for one person in my experience, if you are not working off of some sort of minimally qualified list. Do you have 3+ people cranking on it? Also, getting 23 answers out of a 100 calls sounds like a pipe dream unless you are calling very low into your target organizations. At a Director / VP Marketing level you'll be doing good to get 10 conversations in 100 calls.
Farming 100 leads by identifying possible companies and finding a good contact is about 10 hours of work for one person in my experience, if you are not working off of some sort of minimally qualified list.
• Yep! We are working off an extensive minimally qualified list.
Do you have 3+ people cranking on it?
• Correct again :)
Also, getting 23 answers out of a 100 calls sounds like a pipe dream unless you are calling very low into your target organizations. At a Director / VP Marketing level you'll be doing good to get 10 conversations in 100 calls.
• We haven't hit the hundred mark yet (as we just started this), but that looks like the number we are expecting. Maybe this is the "luck" part of startups? Over time, I see your point and it will make sense that the number evens out to a lower #
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 32.6 ms ] thread(2) Each call is a learning experience (ref: lean startup?). We are not pressing for sales (as you may infer from our pipeline at the bottom of the article), but looking for their pain... setting up a demo (hopefully)... then selling if there is a GOLDEN fit.
(3) On a avg size bed with the A/C on 68F ;)
All that doublespeak about "honestly believing you can help" and "finding the prospect's pains" is just so much trash.
At the end of the day, you're wasting other peoples' time by calling them up and trying to shove your products down their throats.
But I can say as someone with some decision-making input into purchases for an 'enterprise', I _love_ it when I get to talk to an actual dev/engineer. The less I have to talk to a non-engineer salesperson, and the more I get to talk to an engineer, in fact the more likely you are to make a sale to me (assuming your product is actually good).
• We have a three person team.
Farming 100 leads by identifying possible companies and finding a good contact is about 10 hours of work for one person in my experience, if you are not working off of some sort of minimally qualified list.
• Yep! We are working off an extensive minimally qualified list.
Do you have 3+ people cranking on it?
• Correct again :)
Also, getting 23 answers out of a 100 calls sounds like a pipe dream unless you are calling very low into your target organizations. At a Director / VP Marketing level you'll be doing good to get 10 conversations in 100 calls.
• We haven't hit the hundred mark yet (as we just started this), but that looks like the number we are expecting. Maybe this is the "luck" part of startups? Over time, I see your point and it will make sense that the number evens out to a lower #