Angel Knowledge Series
Best Practices inGetting Market Traction: Beating the #1 Cause of Seed Stage Company Failure.
Panelists:
• Eastern NY Angels, Dick Frederick, Albany NY.
• Go Beyond Network, Bethann Kassman, Naples FL.
• Keiretsu Forum, Larry Chaityn, New York, NY.
• Maximize Angel Inv, William De Temple, FL.
• Moderator: Michael Price, CEO Ventures
Agenda.
- Getting to the profitable rinse and repeat Nirvana we all seek.
- Should you be "sales" or "marketing" centric (and which supports the other)?
- Best to organize by Inside/Outside, Hunters/Farmers, Eat What You Kill?
- Experience with Centralized vs Virtual Distributed sales or mktg teams?
- What salesperson profile works best: Grey Hair or Blue Jeans?
- Industry experience and rolodex vs hard charging go getters?
- Best sources of great candidates (sls/mktg)?
- What are current comp plans and creative substitutes?
- Retention best practices (might need to start worrying again)
- How quick to fire non-performers (many NewCo deaths). Metrics?
- CRM and marketing systems experiences/thoughts. Free vs paid.
- Pros/Cons of Paid vs No Charge Pilots? (and transitioning to fully paid)?
- Total costs to budget and what can be cut with least consequence?
- Reasonable salesperson expectations and metrics?
- Reasonable training practices?
- Pros/cons/experiences of outside Lead Gen, Marketing and PR firms.
- Business Development vs Sales.
- To Demo or not to Demo?
- If inside sales, scripted or ad hoc.
- Pricing: High ground, low ground, freemium to premium, and what has worked best lately?
- Ideas to take friction out of the sales process?
- When leveraging social media what works best?
- After taking root, ideas to blossom (upsells, cross-sells, bundling, etc)?
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