article thumbnail

Leaving Government for the Private Sector – Part 2

Steve Blank

The larger the company, the more they’ll separate out business development and sales, with business development focused primarily on lead generation and sales focused on sealing the actual sale of the product or service. Sales roles : The sales cycle is similar to the recruitment cycle of a source.

article thumbnail

Referral Programs: A Guide for Small Business

Duct Tape Marketing

Shorten the sales cycle A strong referral program can significantly shorten the sales cycle. I like to group client referrals into four main types; direct, implied, tangible and community. Exclusive Content or Advisory Board You can create exclusive content or an advisory board of your champion customers.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

SXSW Startups: UbiGro

Austin Startup

A finalist in Hyper-Connected Communities , which will pitch at 5 pm Saturday, March 9, UbiGro is a nanotech-enabled greenhouse film by UbiQD, Inc. There are other soft factors like sales cycle speed, marketing potential, competition, defensibility, and technology readiness level. That’s what led us to agriculture.

article thumbnail

Thoughts from a recent CIO dinner

BeyondVC

In addition, it was quite clear that this was a small community, and like any small community, they all talk with each other and want to know what technologies their peers are using. No one wants to be the first, especially if your technology doesn’t work. The post Thoughts from a recent CIO dinner appeared first on BeyondVC.

article thumbnail

Marketing Metrics 101 for B2B Startups

www.rocketwatcher.com

. # of Opportunities – An opportunity is a lead that is now being actively managed by a sales person and is moving along the pipeline toward either a closed sale or a loss. For long sales cycles, it is important to measure this to estimate marketing ROI for tactics in the short term.

B2B 42