Marketing & Sales technique : The Science of Sales by Donald Doane
Some great discussions today around
developing a business concept making
your product right and I can pick it up
from there and talk about you know once
you have this amazing solution you
developed how to sell it
right how do you monetize it how do you
how do you generate revenues and one of
the common challenges for early-stage
companies is developing or creating a
repeatable scalable sales process that
will take you from concept through
positive profitability and that's what I
like talked about today and so I would
argue that you know after you've found
your your great idea and develop this
amazing product that the very first
thing you should begin to think about is
how you will build a sustainable
business and what that really comes down
to is sales and for most companies lots
of them right so all companies you know
throughout their lifecycle go through a
number of stages in terms of revenue we
all start small we call it you know the
crawl stage right and your base you're
basically taking revenue or getting
business wherever you can and those are
your early adopters clients who invest
in you and your technology and the
revenue at that point is sporadic at
best but at some point it does begin to
look a bit more promising and that
becomes the walk phase right and so your
business gains more adoption and
primarily we're looking at this again
from a revenue standpoint as opposed to
user adoption and from there if you
start to look at your business more
maybe not from a month-to-month but from
a quarterly standpoint you do start to
see more growth but eventually you're
going to hit a run stage right and
you'll reach a steady run rate where
ultimately your business will reach
break-even and then for those
lucky enough you're going to soar to
profitability and so these various
stages for any company are things that
if you put in place again the right
process you can scale and grow and so
when you look at sales a lot of people
think about sales and really focus more
on the art of sales but I would argue
that there's actually a science behind
sales and so oftentimes and we think
about especially as an early-stage
company it's more about the you know the
sales person right it's the the big
personality in the room but as you think
about your business and turning it into
you know that turning it taking from an
idea and turning it into a multi-million
dollar enterprise you can't scale
personality right personnel you only get
you but so far role of rolodex from your
salesperson will only get you but so far
so part of it is understanding you know
what you need to put in place in
addition to the people which are
critical to success of any team but also
the process and for us we actually have
a five stage process that we've built
now your mileage may vary depending on
your solution but typically most
offerings can fall into these five
stages the first is when you're working
with your your target customer in order
to help again build this consistent
level of revenue is to understand or
identify you know what is actually the
opportunity then how do you qualify the
opportunity how will you demonstrate
value to your prospect how do you go
about closing a sale and then growing
that opportunity so the first stage in
the process around identifying the
opportunity really comes down to doing
your homework you know it could be from
the first initial meeting that you have
with a potential customer you know just
doing basic research it might be going
to the company's website or the
university's website
understanding you know in terms of your
solution what sort of challenges they
may be facing today how are they solving
those those challenges maybe some of the
key stakeholders that may be involved in
terms of adopting your solution if
there's any sort of projects that may be
published that you may be able to attach
your your service or product to and then
ultimately are there doing any sort of
strategic initiatives that you can
identify and these are all things again
in terms of preparation that you can do
before even had the first conversation
so oftentimes you know from our
standpoint well actually you know build
out a you know document a number of
these of these items and we'll share
them with everyone who will be at the
meeting just so that we're all on the
same page and the next step in that
process is then understanding you know
is this really an opportunity and the
best way to go about that at least what
we've found is it take more of a
consultative approach more like a doctor
and a patient how can I be of help right
so for me and that's really been sort of
my you know in terms of the companies
I've done in the past you know
ultimately I've developed these products
or services to help people others to
help them save time maybe it's money
maybe it's gain some other sort of
efficiency but ultimately that
conversation is around can you be of
help and in order to understand that you
have to do more listening than talking
so I generally try to put in place at
8020 role 80% of the time you really
should be listening to understand what
are the key challenges they're facing
and is there some way you can be of
assistance and if not through directly
to your company maybe there's some
company or or offering you can refer
them to and so there's a number of
questions you can ask you know to your
again your potential client just
understanding again you know what from
their perspective have you know having
them to describe what they believe is
the problem as opposed to you're telling
them what you believe is a problem
how long has it really been an issue is
this something that you know has been
around it's been an issue for a month a
year longer and it's persisted that long
what are they doing about it and that
that will help you to better understand
again how high a priority this is for
them understanding again what it might
cost them to to to leave this as a
problem not address it maybe it's
nothing and then for you is there any
real value that you can bring to the
table and after you go through the step
if both sides agree that there's a good
fit here that the conversation should
continue and again at this point it's
still a conversation by no means is this
going to be a done deal right you're
still very early in the process the next
stage is to get together and to
demonstrate the value that you have
through your offering now depending on
what your solution is that might be a
presentation it might be a proposal it
might be a product demo right the key is
understanding you know exactly what it
is you have to show the other key factor
and error is understanding who you have
to show it to right your intended
audience we've generally found that
there are sort of three categories when
it comes to these types of presentations
typically you're going to be either
presenting to executives middle
management or operations and all three
groups look at the world in slightly
different ways right so executives tend
to be more visionaries they tend to look
at the future right it's in look at the
overall value of whatever you have to
the entire organization as opposed to
one department right or one team middle
management is a bit more focused on
what's happening today and what sort of
return on investment or ROI will your
solution bring to them or to their their
organization and
operations tends to focus more on the
day-to-day you know the more on the
tactical so they're there they're
concerned really about problems that
already happened you know they're busy
sometimes putting out fires you're
familiar with expression I needed this
yesterday right so they're looking for
that solution right now and primarily a
lot of their decisions are based more on
price so again it's understanding who
you're presenting that to and what you
need to present and if you make it that
far and there is an agreement that you
do have value and that the the client or
prospect wants to move forward with you
at that point that's really when the
work you know the hard work really
begins right because you know once
you've confirmed that you've met all the
expectations now the next thing is
delivering on the value that you
promised and that's key and particularly
in the early stages and we do this
really throughout the lifecycle or I've
done this throughout the lifecycle of my
previous companies is treating each
client or customer as a partner and
really taking time to understand you
know even after you've sold them a
product you know what what is the real
value that they're that they're getting
out of what you have to offer and again
particularly in the early you know the
early stages of your company that's
really important to identify because you
know what you know the feedback they
give you will help you to better target
you know future customers but it will
also help you to improve your product
offering in ways that you may not even
have imagined you'll build a solid
reference which again will help you with
future sales and who knows you know they
may even talk you up to their peers
right so you might you know get future
business through word-of-mouth so all
those things are important to focus on
now once you have that process in place
you know you need to begin to think
about your early adopters and we we
added kind of a second layer to the
process that we call raw and it stands
for ready able willing right so you need
to you know first find those who are
ready for your solution
if you have a disruptive solution not
every potential target prospect may be
ready for what you have they may not be
ready culturally to embrace what you
have it may be a timing issue so you
know you need to go after those or start
to work with those future partners that
are ready to embrace whatever the
solution is that you're bringing to the
market the second piece of that is the
ability to actually fund a purchase
right so even if they're ready but the
funding is not in place there may be a
disconnect so it's a second key piece to
identify and then third the timeframe if
the funding is in place but you know the
time their time frame is next year and
you know your time frame is in one month
then again there's a disconnect so
identifying those three areas on top of
whatever process you have in place will
help you to better understand what is or
what is not an opportunity and again in
the early stages keeping your sales
strategy as simple as possible you know
I like to call it just following the
money you know wherever wherever your
your your your customers or partners
take you in the beginning for the most
part is fine they're going to lead you
in a direction you need to go just
remember in terms of your focus you know
again you for most early-stage companies
you're going to have some limited amount
of runway so in terms of your target
customers being able to identify very
quickly those that you know again are
ready able and willing to partner with
you is going to be key and once you get
those early adopters you know we call
them sometimes the lighthouse accounts
now the trick is going from you know a
handful or a dozen or so of these early
adopters to hundreds thousands or
whatever your benchmark is of potential
and the way to do that is to start to
look at in the early stages for those
early adopters look at the trends you
know what what do these early adopters
all have in common you know you start to
profile your customers and in order to
do that you've got to understand you
know who your customer is you've got it
going back and understand ask them two
questions learn you know oftentimes
people stay learn from your failures
that's absolutely true but in this case
you're actually learning from your
successes right you're profiling your
wins where you were successful and then
figuring out how can I do it again and
again and again for our case we actually
will in places where we failed and one
of my one of my mentors when I started
my first company he encouraged me not to
be afraid to fail just do it quickly and
move on
the key is not to take a long time
failing right and so in your process and
because you have a process you can close
the loop right and so you can take
feedback you know from your team and
incorporate that to make it better the
next time around for everyone so you
know in conclusion you need to have the
right people that's absolutely key but
in addition to the right people need to
make sure you had the right process in
place the other key thing is
understanding that what you have today
in the early stages again you're
eventually going to want to scale so
don't make it all about the personality
always track your successes you know no
one wins right in a game unless you keep
score so you have to you have to monitor
you know how you're progressing and last
but not least listen to your customers I
can't stress this enough in terms of
gaining you know feature adoption again
whatever your product or service is your
customers will will give you the right
direction thank you very much
Who is Donald Doane
As co-founder and current CEO of ConnectYard, Doane speaks from his experiences of beginning a startup. This talk explores a common challenge for many young companies, which is learning how to create a repeatable and scalable sales process that will take their company from concept through profitability.
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