Young Successful Entrepreneur

I made 15 new cold-calls today.  Of the 15, only one picked up the phone.

It can get pretty discouraging.  ”How am I suppose to sell to someone who won’t pick up my phone calls?”  In a world where our target customers are blasted with advertisements, emails, phone calls, and direct mail, selling can become a real up hill battle.

I wish I could tell you secret techniques that will allow you to increase your sales by 200%!  I wish I could tell you a universal solution for selling to top executives. Unfortunately, these things just don’t exist.

From my personal experience, I have found that consistency, organization, and a positive attitude are the key attributes that a successful businessman has.

What I found after trying the Tim Ferriss method of calling really early in the morning or really late at night

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Here is how we did it:

1. In the past 60 days, Yu-kai and I have met with more than 35 investors
2. In the past 90 days, Yu-kai and I have pitched at more than 20 angel/VC sponsored events
3. Yu-kai and I emailed more than 200 friends and professionals in our network asking for funding or for an introduction to funding
4. Yu-kai has rewritten and revised our Executive Summary and Power Point Deck at least 8 times in the past 60 days
5. Yu-kai and I wrote a blog post on our blog letting our readers know that we’re looking for capatal

The above 5 points illustrate just how much time and hard-work go into raising capital.

This post is dedicated to the bootstrapped entrepreneur in the technology/internet industry looking to raise Angel or VC money.  You will learn how we got our investor meetings, how we pitched at investor-sponsored events, and how we utilized our network and blogs to raise capital.

How to schedule a meetings with more than 35 investors in 60 days

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“If your customer doesn’t want to buy the product, then there’s no way you can sell it to them”

We all get brilliant ideas.  Part of our failure to sell our product is that our target market does not want to purchase our brilliant idea.  The absolute worst situation that you can get into is to spend time and money finishing a product, only to find out that no one wants to buy your product.

As CMOs, Marketing Directors, or Product Directors of our startup, it’s our duty to make sure there is a market for the products that we are building.  This post is designed to show you exactly how to survey your target market and make sure that there is a market who will purchase your product.

My current Customer Development project

My team’s most recent idea is to create a “lite” version of our product that is affordable and beneficial to bloggers.

The Idea: One of the features of our current product accomplishes the following for ecommerce stores:

1. Increases email list subscribers
2. Provides valuable social and demographic data about email list subscribers

Since we’re doing this for ecommerce stores, why not create a simple, plug-and-play solution for bloggers?

So now that we have an idea about what bloggers may want, it’s my job to survey the target market (do Customer Development) and find out if this is something that bloggers want, and most importantly, if this is something bloggers would pay for.

How to begin the Customer Development process

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“Startups don’t fail because the product sucks; startups fail because of a failure to sell the product.”

If you’re the founder of a B2B startup with a SaaS product, then this post is for you.  As the Chief Marketing Officer of Viralogy, it is my primary objective to sell our product to companies.  In this post, I will describe my current selling techniques, processes, and what I’ve learned from trial and error.

What we’re selling and who we’re selling it to

Viralogy is a Social Commerce platform that utilizes the Facebook Social Graph to personalize the shopping experience for ecommerce stores. We are targeting companies that fit the following criteria:

1. Industry: Ecommerce
2. Niche: Beauty Retail
3. Annual Revenue: $1M - $10M

Know exactly who your target market is.  We went as far as to purchase the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide 2010 Edition so that we could better understand our target market.

Twitter won’t bring you the clients - You’ll need to grow some balls and pick up the phone

I am cold-calling potential clients.

I’m not trying to Tweet them or message them via Facebook.  I’m not trying to comment on their blogs in hopes that they’ll respond.  If I had a year to sell the product, then perhaps I would employ these methods; however, a young internet startup needs clients as soon as possible, and the best way to do that is to get my ass on the phone and start selling directly to my target market.

Cold-calling will grow hair on your chest.  It’s definitely not for the faint of heart - just ask my Co-Founder Yu-kai.  So if you don’t have what it takes, then you better find someone who does.

The most effective selling method for a young unknown company with an extremely small budget is to get on the phone and make sales calls.

Your mindset before you begin

Selling is a numbers game.  At the same time, you don’t want to “waste” potential prospects by selling completely unprepared.  Before you begin, do the following:

1. Read Cold Calling Techniques that Really Work
2. Practice with your Co-Founders for a whole day straight
3. Have a solid base of 75 target companies to call each week

The key is to be persistent and patient.  You will not make an appointment with a potential client the first week - I didn’t.  But during my second week, I was able to make 4 appointments.  I stay persistent and patient and make 15 cold-calls to new potential prospects every single weekday.

Rejoice every time that someone rejects you because it means you’re getting that much closer to a sale.  Seek out the rejections!  I’m serious here; you have to completely lose your mind and hunt for the rejections because the more times that you get rejected, the more sales that you’re making.

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Name: Brenton Gieser
Company: http://convospark.com/
Blog: http://brentongieser.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/brentongieser

Today I speak with my good friend Brenton Gieser about relationships, startups, and his experience with building a digital marketing agency.

The first video dives into detail about our relationships as entrepreneurs.  I feel Brenton is unique in his relationship in that his girlfriend is deeply involved with his startup and acts as his driver and motivator.  They often work together at coffee shops and support each other in every way.

The second video is about Brenton’s experience with building a digital marketing agency.  A lot of the advice centers around the fact that Brenton was able to leverage his previous agency experience to build Convospark.

Hope you guys enjoy the videos!  Below you will find summarized recaps of our talking points:

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3 years ago, I left my corporate job to pursue Future Delivery full time with Yu-kai, Stephen, and Joseph.  Back then, we had no understanding of how to run a company, how to finish a product that people would pay for, or how to sell our product.  The result: two failed startups.

A year ago I was given the opportunity to build a digital marketing agency.  In one year, my agency team and I grew it to a $1.2 million company and I was making as much money as my investment banker friends.

A sophomore in college once told me:

“Jun, if you had made it as an Investment Banker, you would never have become an entrepreneur.  The money is all that matters.”

I used to doubt myself.  What if I had become an investment banker?  Would I still blog or be an entrepreneur?  Or would I settle down with my nice salary and live a long, comfortable life?

You can’t possibly know who you are until you’re put into the situation.  3 years out of college, I was given the choice:

Follow the money: Stay with the agency and make a high 6-figure salary by the end of this year
or
Follow my heart: Leave the agency and work side-by-side with my startup team on Viralogy

I now know who I am.  And I’m so very happy to be the person that I’ve always wanted to be.

I left my agency last week - all the money in the world can’t hold me back from following my heart.

There is only one goal on my mind right now: To have a successful exit with my startup and to do it with my team

And you know what, we’re closer to reaching this goal than ever before.  We’re so close that we can taste it, and it tastes so good:

1. We have successfully launched our product
2. We have validated that our product works and increased revenue for our clients by up to 15%
3. We have paying customers
4. We currently building more and better features for our product

For those of you who are curious about what my company does, this video will tell you in detail:

The team is ready to receive an angel round of funding that will allow us to increase inbound leads, scale our infrastructure, and increase our product features. If you or someone you know has money to invest, the following sections detail the pain we solve, the market opportunity, the business model, the milestones we’ve hit, and what we plan to do with your invested dollars:

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This is an Entrepreneur Spotlight guest post from Maren Donovan from Escaping the 9 to 5

I’ve been on an entrepreneurial path since the age of 19, and its felt like I’ve been fighting an uphill battle for the majority of the time.  People around me don’t understand why I’d rather work for 10 hours straight than go hang out with everyone at the river and enjoy a beautiful day outside.  I tell them it’s because I’m battle born, which usually brings odd looks, but being battle born isn’t a bad thing and if you understand it it’ll change the way you do business forever.

Nevada, the place I currently reside, is nicknamed the “Battle Born State” after their induction into the Union during the Civil War. Similarly, the battle born entrepreneur is launched into struggles and challenges before they’re necessarily ready.  It’s because of these hardships that the entrepreneur learns the value of patience, diligence, and persistence, attributes that you’d never find if your path in life was laid out for you nicely with a little map.

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