It’s hard enough to raise capital from VC, private equity fund, and family offices. How do you sell to them? I’m an investor in many companies which sell to these types of clients. I put together a cheat sheet with some of the sales best practices I’ve seen. I thought this would be helpful to...
[Continue Reading]How to find the right online communities
The user experience in the big, ungated social networks is getting steadily worse: spam, bots, fake news. There are three main solutions: technology (i.e., anti-bot tools, but that’s an endless battle); gating; and/or curation/moderation. One result: I think we’ll see people spending more and more time in gated online communities. Particularly in a time of...
[Continue Reading]Sales 2.0: why can’t sales be as efficient as online dating?
I’m teaching a class for Founder Institute July 8 on accelerating sales with technology. This has been a passion of mine for well over a decade, ever since I realized how inefficient sales was and how technology could be used to speed up the process. This is a core theme of my book, The Virtual...
[Continue Reading]Feedback is a gift; should you ask for it?
It’s rare to find someone who is insightful about you and your business … and rarer to find someone confident enough in their relationship with you to give you honest feedback. I treasure these people, and have paid a coach to do this for me personally. When you’re meeting with your board, I strongly recommend...
[Continue Reading]You are leaving money on the table: the secrets of pricing
Oscar Wilde said that a cynic is a “a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” A startup CEO should know both. One of the most powerful levers a CEO has to impact profitability is pricing. Typically, a 1% price increase has more than twice the impact on profit of...
[Continue Reading]How Tech Startups Can Get Money and Support from the Fortune 500
How can a tech startup engage with a Fortune 500 company for mutual benefit? Fortune 500 corporations are stressed about where they can get growth and how to plug into the innovative and nimble entrepreneurial ecosystem. The chasm between the typical Fortune 500 company and a startup is typically too vast for a standard partnership....
[Continue Reading]Why We Chose Salesforce CRM Over Zoho
I finally did it: I’ve moved my contact database over to the web. After extensive research of different CRM solutions (thanks BestVendor), we’re working with Salesforce.com. We also used Salesforce heavily at one of my prior companies, Circle of Experts. I’ve been a loyal Act user for my personal CRM system since 1996, and have...
[Continue Reading]How to ask your board for introductions
Venture capitalists and your other board members want to help you, and in fact are paid to help you. As T.A. McCann suggests, you want your VCs ideally to not just make an introduction, but as appropriate, help you close the deal. However, without some guidance from you, your board/VCs cannot provide you with maximum...
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