Both Sides of the Table

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Helping Startups Understand Salespeople & the Sales Culture

Both Sides of the Table

Specifically what is often not in the DNA of founders are sales skills. The result is a lack of knowledge of the process and of sales people themselves. I had never had any sales training so everything we did for the first couple of years was instinctual. I boil it down to this: sales people are sales people.

Sales 382
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How to Shorten Your Sales Cycle and Avoid Wasting Time

Both Sides of the Table

One of the questions I’m most often asked by CEOs is how to hire sales people. I’ve also written extensively on sales and on which sales execs to hire and how to think about the different kinds of sales leaders. If they’re not buying you need to be marketing to them not selling to them.

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Improving Sales: The Excuse Departement is Closed

Both Sides of the Table

Specifically what is often not in the DNA of founders are sales skills. The result is a lack of knowledge of the process and of sales people themselves. I had never had any sales training so everything we did for the first couple of years was instinctual. I boil it down to this: sales people are sales people.

Sales 316
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Scaling Sales: Arming & Aiming – A’s, B’s & C’s

Both Sides of the Table

This is part of my ongoing Sales & Marketing Series. In the first part of this post I talked about how sales in a startup is often evangelical , requires as consultative sale and needs constant adjustments based on customer feedback. We had 4 or 5 sales reps that had been around since the early days.

Sales 286
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Identifying Pain in the First Step in a Sales Process – Here’s How

Both Sides of the Table

In my first enterprise software company we developed a methodology for sales that we called PUCCKA. Having a methodology instead of just going on random sales visits helped force a bit of rigor and honesty amongst team members about how well or not we thought we were doing. The best sales meetings are discussions. Click here.

Sales 367
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Startup Sales – Why Hiring Seasoned Reps May Not Work

Both Sides of the Table

A while back I wrote a bunch of posts on Sales & Marketing and have been meaning to get back to that theme for a while. Even if you don’t have “direct&# sales I would tell you that “everything is a sale&# including fund raising, hiring, getting press and doing business development.

Hiring 346
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Tips to Help you Think About Sales at Your Startup

Both Sides of the Table

It’s the lifeblood of any organization and yet most startups don’t have any sales DNA on their teams. It’s important enough that I dedicate a tab on my blog to startup sales & marketing. But the ground we covered was awesome for anybody wanting to know more about sales. What is your sales process?