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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.

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Speed in Sales at Startups

Austin Startup

The Ferrari Museum in Modena, Italy The defining characteristic of the Silicon Valley startup is speed. In the world of startups, the idea of speed is often mentioned alongside shipping products and executing company-wide sprints but rarely is it discussed explicitly within the function of Sales. 2021 instead of 2022.

Sales 64
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Entrepreneurs are Everywhere Show No. 39: Jeremy Johnson and Michael Eidsaune

Steve Blank

We were charging a really high up-front annual fee to these providers and the end result of that was a pretty long sales cycle. We tested the new strategy with several customers in the pipeline and it took our sales cycle from about 60 days to 1 week. The problem was had the wrong business model at the time.

Cofounder 142
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Entrepreneurs are Everywhere Show No. 39: Jeremy Johnson and Michael Eidsaune

Steve Blank

We were charging a really high up-front annual fee to these providers and the end result of that was a pretty long sales cycle. We tested the new strategy with several customers in the pipeline and it took our sales cycle from about 60 days to 1 week. The problem was had the wrong business model at the time.

Cofounder 120
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Strategy Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Exciting Companies Lined Up For Microsoft Startup Grant Finals

ReadWriteStart

Having worked on technology licensing businesses, I have a good idea on how challenging those are from a sales cycle and cash flow perspective and, since Abhijit is still running a bootstrapped operation, I asked him about his strategy to manage the long sales cycle and the associated cash flow challenge.

India 123
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Strategy Roundtable: Do Not Spray and Pray

ReadWriteStart

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. Sramana Mitra is a technology entrepreneur and strategy consultant in Silicon Valley. For Vimagino, therefore, an OEM strategy is a far better starting point.

India 114
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Retro: My Favorite Blog Post on Raising VC

Both Sides of the Table

After my company was acquired by Salesforce.com I was asked to stop blogging and they took over my blog as an asset in the sale of the company. 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.