Start up Sales from Columbia Business School's Launching New Ventures course. Generating leads, sales pipeline, increasing close rates, tips and tricks.

1. Start-up Sales
Launching New Ventures
17 November 2014Jeremy M. Seltzer

2. CYA Slide
• These are my stories, thoughts, and perspectives
• Focus on everything except pitch itself
• Ethics: Every salesperson draws their own line:
o Selling products that aren’t yet completed
o “Say yes, but do it on a phone call”
o Do you add people you don’t know on LinkedIn?
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3. The Plan
• Who I am, What I do, Why I do it
• Movable Ink: Quick Pitch
• Some things I think are true or thought-provoking
• My favorite sales tools
• The “Sales Cycle”
o Getting the Meeting
o The Meeting
o After the Meeting
o Getting to Signature
• Final Thoughts and Q&A
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4. Who I am / What I do
• Education:
• Learning that I’m
not going to be
a Chemical
Engineer forever:
• My happy
life in start-
up land:
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5. My Job
• How do you find the people using square wheels?
• How do you get them to chat with you?
• How do you show them that you’re holding a round wheel?
• How do you make them look like a genius for bringing you in?
• How do you create scalable processes to run 100+ opps simultaneously?5

6. Wrapp (very early stage)
• Funded by Atomico (Niklas Zennstrom) & Greylock
(Reid Hoffman)  Over $25M raised.
• Founders: Hjalmar Winbladh (Rebtel) & Andreas Ehn
(Spotify)
• Inventing a new space called “SOCIAL GIFTING”
• Initial success in Sweden lead to global expansion
and US launch in January 2012
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7. Wrapp (very early stage)
• Part of core US launch team
• Getting our first clients (pure hunter role)
• Target buyer: Social, Digital, Gift Card, CRM
Marketing  CMO buy-in
• How do we measure success?
o Sales
o Quantity of partners, Quality of offers
o Data sharing / Product feedback  Help find product market fit
o Exposure through partner channels
o How do you create a commission structure? YOU DON’T, YET.
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8. Movable Ink (Series B)
• Funding led by Intel Capital - $14M to date in seed,
Series A & Series B
• Invented a technology that allows the content of
an email to change / update at the moment the
email is opened.
• Creating the market for “contextual email
marketing”
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9. Movable Ink (Series B)
• 40th hire (now 60)
• Getting from 8-figure ARR to 9-figure
• Target buyer – Director of Email Communication or
VP Marketing
• My role: Strategic Account Executive
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10. Movable Ink (Series B)
• My role: Hunting within Farming
• My role according to my boss: “But, Jeremy, we
hired you to get people to say yes, now.” – MI CRO
• My role according to my commission agreement:
“Obtain a written, signed, valid and unconditional contract for a
subscription to MI’s services with a customer for a minimum ARR of
$30,000 and minimum commitment of 12 months…annual sales
target of $3M.”
“Of course you want more revenue, but what good is
it if it isn’t predictable?” - Aaron Ross, Predictable Revenue
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11. Movable Ink:
Quick Pitch

12. BillboardBoutique
Roles & Responsibilities,
Hours
EMAIL PERSONALIZATION AT SCALE

13. Movable Ink (Series B)
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14. CHANGING EMAIL CONTENT AT THE “MOMENT OF OPEN”

15. MARKETING THAT KNOWS YOUR LOCATION

16. WEATHER-BASED TARGETING + WEB CROP

17. PERSONALIZED WEB CROP – POST PURCHASE
%4.2 CONVERSION RATE
$1MM LIFT
in annual incremental
revenue

18. MOVABLE INK CLIENT EXPERIENCE TEAM
WEEKS 1-2
Goals Alignment: Movable Ink will understand the key performance indicators for your email campaigns to ensure we are
delivering ROI on your investment dollars.
Education & Support: Movable Ink’s team will train your team on how to use our dashboard based on your goals and
ensure your questions are answered with every campaign build.
Strategy & Ideation: Plan regular calls and requirements sessions to ensure on time delivery, while consulting on campaign
templates to build new use cases that deliver results.
Success Review: Track ongoing campaign performance against KPIs with Movable Ink’s Advanced Analytics and custom
reports
Roadmap: Plan future campaigns by understanding Movable Ink’s newest and planned capabilities
Roadmap
Goals Alignment
Success Review
Strategy & Ideation
Education &
Support
DAY 90 QUARTERLY END YEAR 1

19. Some things I
think are true…

20. What’s the key
to being a great
salesperson?
#1 interview answer: “Listening”
Start-up sales: getting them to talk.

21. The sales process
is like a Chemical
reaction

22. Activation Energy > estimated ROI
Required for Signature
Deal Fails
Deal Succeeds
Your
Pitch
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23. What is paid for, gets
attention.
What gets attention,
gets better.
What gets better, gets
paid for.

24. “SALES DRIVES
PRODUCT”
“PRODUCT
DRIVES SALES”
VS.

25. “SALES DRIVES
PRODUCT”
“PRODUCT
DRIVES SALES”
Early Stage Later StageGROWTH STAGE
?
“Culture of Success & Mutual
Respect Drives Collaboration”

26. “It’s easier to ask for
forgiveness than
permission.”
Sometimes. In early stage start-up sales, absolutely.

27. My Favorite
Sales Tools

28. A few of my favorite
tools:
• Slack – Internal communication made easy
• Boomerang – Never forget to follow up
• Rapportive – Guessing email addresses accurately
• LinkedIn Premium – Bother people with a professional touch
• Salesforce – Log your activities for smarter business insights
• Zuora – Tie subscription billing to Salesforce for SaaS companies
• Cirrus Insight & Tout - Link your Gmail to Salesforce
• Pardot – Link site activity to Salesforce
• Clearslide – Deliver smart presentations, stalk your prospects
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29. Slack
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30. Salesforce
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31. Salesforce
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32. Clearslide
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33. Clearslide
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34. The Sales Cycle

35. The Sales Cycle
35Aaron Ross, Predictable Revenue

36. The Sales Cycle
36Aaron Ross, Predictable Revenue

37. Getting the
Meeting
Creating SALs

38. Getting the Meeting
How do you get meetings?
• Inbound Leads
o Webinars
o Conferences
o SEO
o PR
o Marketing
• Outbound Leads
o Sales Development Reps (SDRs)
o Channels Partners
• Finding your champion (why is it good for the
company and why is it good for you?)
• SALs: Sales Accepted Leads
o Leading indicator metric: “New Pipeline Generated per Month”
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39. Getting the Meeting
Some tips & tricks for success:
• Multiple touch-points: Email, LinkedIn, Twitter, Phone
• Multiple contacts: colleagues, other salespeople, mutual contacts
• Mentioning partners in their space
• Moving to in-person
• “I’m going to be in the area”
• My VP is going to be in the area
• Food
• Food for you and your team
• “Lunch and Learn”: completely non-committal
• Completely blind introductions
• Have your users sell for you (Wrapp  coordinated assault on brands)
Uncertain areas:
• “Discovery calls”?
• Growing the first meeting?
• How aggressive to be?
• Careful with key terms that ‘bucket’ your solution
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40. Getting the Meeting
• How it can work (Derek Martin, Metlife):
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41. Getting the Meeting
• The usual reality (Joe Alfano, Staples):
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42. The Meeting
Turning SALs into Opportunities

43. The Meeting
• Pitch
o Build Trust
o Build Value
o Share Case Studies
o Set Expectations
o Timeline
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44. The Meeting
Last 10 minutes, key points:
• Decision-maker
• Budget source
• Next meetings (according to your pre-defined
goals)
o NOTE: Prospects believe it would be irresponsible to commit after 1
meeting. They want to do ‘due diligence’, but they’re often not sure what
to ask. Guide them. Develop a 1 month sales process with 3 meeting
steps. E.g.:
• (1) Capabilities demo (multiple times if necessary  don’t leave it to
internal pitches)
• (2) Custom demo
• (3) IT/Tech feasibility
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45. After the
Meeting

46. After the Meeting
• Follow Up, Follow Up, Follow Up
• Use your tracking tools to monitor engagement
• Guide towards finish line
• Creating urgency:
o Retailers: MLK, V-day, Easter, “Moms, Dads & Grads”, July 4, Back to
School, Black Friday, Christmas
o Discounted pricing
o Providing proposals with validity end-dates
o Understanding their fiscal year / budgeting processes
o Making it as easy as possible for them
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47. Getting to
Signature

48. Getting to Signature
• Concrete Steps:
o Confirming Budget with Decision Maker
o Master Services Agreement (MSA) + Statement of Work (SOW)
o Deciding whose ‘paper’ will be used 
• Food for thought: major players in your space may already have
relationships with larger Fortune500 orgs. Reduce sales cycle and
headache by setting up a pass-through.
o Legal redlines process
• Typical challenges in the legal redlines:
o Insurance
o Liability
o Data security  “Who owns the data”? VS negotiations
• Key Question: Do you do pilots/tests?
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49. Getting to Signature
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50. Losing Deals
• #1: Try not to do this
• #2: Understand why
• #3: In competitive landscape, try to get last word
on pricing
• #4: Keep door open for future conversations
• #5: Set up internal feedback systems to product,
account teams
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51. Book Recommendations
• Predictable Revenue, Aaron Ross
• The Challenger Sale, Matthew Dixon
• Getting to Yes, Roger Fisher
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52. THANK YOU.
jeremy.seltzer@gmail.com
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