Version One Ventures

FEBRUARY 15, 2017

And selling to institutions requires a long sales cycle. Top Hat had an early and continuous focus on revenue; they have been operating profitably since their launch in 2009. Generally speaking, Ed Tech has proven to be a tough vertical, primarily due to the fact that it’s hard to charge consumers (students) directly.

Vertical 132

Vertical Technical Review Cofounder Sales Cycle 132

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

Selling into this market requires the traditional enterprise sales approach, comprised of a large ‘boots on the ground’ field sales team that works with key decision makers (e.g. These are long sales cycles, often with multiple departments and stakeholders involved. CTO, VP of HR) in the customer organization.

Fractional CTO 154

Fractional CTO Software Review Viral Sales Cycle 154

Hunter Walker

JUNE 7, 2014

Not because they’re all operating in stealth or pre-product – in fact some already are earning $1m+ in revenue per annum. Party rounds blew up on a number of startups who found it difficult to get ongoing operational support from investors who didn’t have time or inclination to lean in.

Technical Review 117

Technical Review CTO Hire Finance Stealth 117

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 20, 2023

Technologies that cure world hunger may find that that hungry people don’t have money, and government agencies as customers are a very long sales cycle. More features usually means more complexity in operation and support. Limit the features and complexity. Technologists tend to add more features, just because they can.

Customer 276

Customer Sales Cycle Social Media Viral 276

View from Seed

MARCH 3, 2015

When do you start to double-down or evolve the playbook into a way of operating? EM: My rule of thumb is to look at the length of the sales cycle. Some startups have really long sales cycles. Some have short, more transactional cycles. Should you do that at all?

Marketing 120

Marketing Sales Cycle Startup CTO Hire 120

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 30, 2022

Face-to-face engagement is important, especially at vital points in the sales cycle or while creating relationships. Businesses are being more concerned about the changing habits of their stakeholders and are adjusting their culture and operations accordingly. This won’t just be about daily business operations but performance.

Entrepreneur 124

Entrepreneur Green Technical Review Social Media 124

Duct Tape Marketing

APRIL 18, 2024

John (04:26): So a lot of books consulting around this idea of scaling, making a business run without you really all come down to systems and process and operations. Mandi (12:58): And then the root cause of that is the pricing structure for how you're operating. We need to go make more sales. Again, that's gusto.com/duct tape.

Framework 62

Framework Sales Cycle Sales Hiring 62

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 15, 2021

As a result, most companies around the world had to shift their operations online. To meet these critical goals, a sales report should cover all of the following topics: Daily goals and quotas. Average time for completing the sales cycle. Number of sales calls, their duration, and success ratio.

Sales 78

Sales Startup Social Media Technical Review 78

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 31, 2010

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. The next few posts are going to talk about scaling your sales operations as you move out of the evangelical phase.

Sales 286

Sales PR Forecast Technical Review 286

Steve Blank

MARCH 17, 2020

Here are a few thoughts about operating in uncertainty in a pandemic. All your assumptions about customers, sales cycle and most importantly, revenue, burn rate and runway are no longer true. If you are selling to businesses (a B-to-B market) have your customers’ sales dropped? And what’s in my lifeboat?”.

Burn Rate 436

Burn Rate Startup Valuation Sales Cycle 436

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 29, 2011

We did learn from the experience — we did a post-mortem and decided what evidence should have stopped us from accepting the account, and now we build that into our sales cycle. For the same reason that I keep recommending Bill.

Technical Review 236

Technical Review Software Review Reputation Sales Cycle 236

The Startup Magazine

APRIL 11, 2021

If this scenario sounds uncomfortably familiar, then you need to take a closer look at your sales approach and examine whether a CRM software application can help. A CRM tool means time management is a cinch and it makes customer service a priority.

Sales 175

Sales Sales Cycle Campaign Software 175

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 3, 2016

Some of the same underlying principles apply, but because of the inherent differences in buying decisions and sales cycles, pulling B2C optimization practices straight from the book might be a bad idea. There are a few things that make optimizing for B2B a different beast: The sales cycle is usually longer.

B2B 48

B2B Conversion B2C Sales Cycle 48

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 16, 2011

In the case of Freshdesk, their main competitor, Zendesk, is operating with a San Francisco - Copenhagen cost-structure and will find it harder to compete with this strategy. Zendesk is heavily financed by Benchmark and Charles River and has 10,000 customers.

India 123

India Bootstrapping Non-Compete Entrepreneur 123

ReadWriteStart

FEBRUARY 1, 2012

Most have felt the program worthwhile and given them a jumpstart on their operations. We have begun the sales cycle with a number of potential clients and are nurturing these relationships during private beta stage and are looking to white label our product.". Each year, U.S. billion market opportunity.

St. Louis 118

St. Louis CTO Hire Fractional CTO Entrepreneur 118

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 19, 2020

Technologies that cure world hunger may find that that hungry people don’t have money, and government agencies as customers are a very long sales cycle. More features usually means more complexity in operation and support. Limit the features and complexity. Technologists tend to add more features, just because they can.

Technology 317

Technology Marketing Sales Cycle Social Media 317

The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 7, 2013

There’s friction in companies, and so the sales cycles are long. Find a current or former operator that’s passionate about your vision, easy to get along with, and accessible (I shared more advice on this in my recent article on VC signaling). Build and depend on a dream team of enterprise-savvy advisors and doers.

Technical Cofounder 145

Technical Cofounder Sales Cycle Cofounder Sales 145

Small Business Force

AUGUST 27, 2017

After some review and analysis, we learned that the sales cycle (from the initial intro to contract) for this product was, actually, an average of 6 months. The Right Sales Process Selling is a process, not an event. And that process is the sales cycle, and it’s rarely a “cookie cutter” process.

Sales 30

Sales Sales Cycle Product Technical Review 30

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

My first company was founded in Ireland, headquartered in England and had country operations in the UK, France & Germany. Due to the language and culture issues in Europe we opted for a country structure with an MD in each country and local sales, marketing & customers support staff. It doesn’t seem fair.

Ireland 319

Ireland Sales Bankruptcy Germany 319

Where to Play

FEBRUARY 5, 2019

It can fly or roll on any surface, and will actually be able to operate in a wide range of temperatures and pressures. Plants that convert heat energy into electric power, include huge boilers and super-heaters operating under extreme temperatures. The overall challenge was therefore estimated as ‘low-mid’.

Agile 54

Agile Technical Review Sales Cycle Distribution 54

The Startup Magazine

JANUARY 23, 2020

Others still will pick and choose the best solutions and integrate them to unify their business operations. Sales Engagement Software. Perhaps one of the most important places to invest in technology is when it comes to sales. You can custom tailor these scripts so that they are suited to each stage of the sales cycle.

Small Business 99

Small Business Sales Sales Cycle Conversion 99

The Startup Magazine

NOVEMBER 3, 2021

In this article, we try and help those who want to promote and boost their SaaS operations by sharing some clever ways to go about it. Since SaaS products have a short sales cycle where potential leads may not interact with your sales team, email marketing plays an important role in encouraging leads through the sales funnel.

Advertising 159

Advertising Social Media Campaign SEO 159

Women Entrepreneurs Can

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

Most leads don’t want to blindly go into a SaaS purchase, especially if it’s something pivotal to their operations, such as a police records management system (RMS). The SaaS sales cycle tends to be longer than for a lot of other products and services. Onboarding can be a big friction point in the SaaS sales cycle.

Churn Rate 52

Churn Rate Sales B2C Sales Cycle 52

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

Today she is operating at a 30,000 feet level, and I am concerned that unless she gets down to earth and develops more granular and specific strategies, she will not get anywhere. With enterprise customers, this would result in tremendous exit barriers, making sales cycles long and involved, which a small startup will find hard to withstand.

India 114

India Silicon Valley Incubator Bootstrapping 114

Duct Tape Marketing

APRIL 30, 2012

Most technology solutions are only as good as the planning that goes into the front end installation and consistency involved in the back end operation and execution. This is not to say that the technology itself is lacking.

Management 68

Management Customer Sales Cycle Technical Review 68

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 2, 2015

These should include general sales/product messages, special offers, customer testimonials, case studies, third-party research and newsletters. Once sales collateral is categorized it needs to be assigned timing. Begin building the master sales calendar. Put events and past sales wins on parallel timelines.

Customer 100

Customer Sales Cycle Campaign Social Media 100

Up and Running

OCTOBER 7, 2019

This metric helps determine how much cash you need for operation and expansion. Open opportunities by stage: monitor the number of leads you have at each stage of the sales cycle and how you can best allocate resources to pursue them. Activation rate: measures how many visitors are engaging with your website or app.

Founder 71

Founder Retention Metrics Technical Review 71

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 20, 2014

Creators of technologies that cure world hunger may find that hungry people don’t have money, but government agencies as customers are a very long sales cycle. More features usually means more complexity in operation and support. Limit the features and complexity. Technologists tend to add more features, just because they can.

Technology 286

Technology Startup Sales Cycle Social Media 286

Austin Startup

APRIL 17, 2017

Candidates will learn our culture and how to go through steps of sales cycle with Lead Generation, B2B and B2C sales and account management. To Apply: Please send your resume to admin@visualsemantics.io golf interest or background will be a plus* Candidate should also be comfortable working in and outdoors.

Semantic 48

Semantic Social Media Database Artificial Inteligence 48

Women Entrepreneurs Can

OCTOBER 6, 2023

Having this kind of system in your B2B sales can help you deliver on the promises you make to prospects, and it can also help you increase revenue operations by shortening the sales cycle, reducing rogue discounting, and delivering consistent cross-sell and upsell opportunities.

Software 52

Software Sales Sales Cycle Revenue 52

ConversionXL

JULY 8, 2020

Nick Supapol from SearchEnginePeople recommends using a time lag report to match the membership duration to your sales cycle (e.g., Operations, real estate, administrative. Membership duration: Type in how many days you’re willing to wait before you give up on people who didn’t convert. Finance, health care, agriculture.

PPC 100

PPC Matching Software Review Campaign 100

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

I had planned a balance of large companies and SMB/divisional sales but have changed my thinking. Reasons: cost of sales executives, long sales cycles, deep functional requirements. But not one VC thought I should go after big, enterprise clients. I think good VC’s really do make a difference.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Term Sheet San Diego Viral 274

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 19, 2016

Technologies that cure world hunger may find that that hungry people don’t have money, and government agencies as customers are a very long sales cycle. More features usually means more complexity in operation and support. Limit the features and complexity. Technologists tend to add more features, just because they can.

Sales Cycle 120

Sales Cycle Social Media Viral Technology 120

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

Sales cycles matter though. HOWEVER, the length of a sales cycle is a strong consideration for most repeat successful founders. On one hand, I know some really successful founders actually opt for a *longer sales cycle*. (I Sales cycle, as a consideration, also works the opposite way.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

Sales cycles matter though. HOWEVER, the length of a sales cycle is a strong consideration for most repeat successful founders. On one hand, I know some really successful founders actually opt for a *longer sales cycle*. (I Sales cycle, as a consideration, also works the opposite way.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

Bootstrap was term coined from the computer lingo ‘booting’ which means starting a computer or starting a chain of processes which eventually starts up the operating system. Another pro-tip – Keep everything short – small up-front capital requirement, short sales cycles, short payment terms and recurring revenue cycles.

Bootstrapping 100

Bootstrapping Cofounder Startup Sales Cycle 100

NZ Entrepreneur

SEPTEMBER 16, 2020

The statistics show that even though most founders bet their time and resources that their startups will be the best in the world, 90% of those new startups won’t be in operation in 10-15 years. Some common drivers of sales underperformance include product-market fit challenges, slow/low sales channels, and poor execution.

Startup 69

Startup Sales Cycle Down Round Revenue 69