Contact the author: Matthew Feng - alex.fung@aiesec.net

1. Report
Context
• Forewords
• Data&Analysis
• Follow-ups
• Learnings
• Future advice
Forewords
My name is Matt, MCVP iGIP 1415 in MoC, is representing my teammates
Bob(MCVP FN 1415), Shinee(VP oGIP 2015 in RUC), Alessio and Hans to
compile and present the project report. Thank you for your time to read this
and hope you find something useful to be carried on in the future. Your
feedback will be appreciated. Enjoy.
Data&Analysis
1. Leads generation channel and sales data(emails not included)
- Team analysis
-leads/meetings/company/RA
-events/joint-events/alumni/linkedin

2. a. In almost 5 weeks, as a team, we made 235 leads and out of these leads we
generated 49 meetings(including online meetings) and 11 companies agreed to
partner with us, and temporarily 36 raises are being converted.
b. As for intensity, we've attended over 25 networking events plus hosted 3
joint events with 3rd party organizations, which means we go to at least 1
event a day averagely, meanwhile we also go to 49 meetings(made 8 meetings
per person) and took care of 47 leads/person.
235
49
11
36
0
50
100
150
200
250
leads
meetings
company
Ra
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
Matt
Shinee
Bob
Alessio
Hans
leads
meetings
company
RA

3. Combined the data above, I would say we had the right intensity(not the best,
I am sure there is still space to push the limits).
c. As for channel effectiveness, we bet the most of Networking Events, and
from the 11 companies, 8 are generated from the Networking Channel;
However, this channel has its own limits,
-Energy: most of the events are held at night, it requires more time after
common working time and might affect the overall energy level of each
teammate.
-Outbound approach: we don’t have a lot of controlling power, it's more
decisive from the hosting origination side, we are doing networking under a
invisible flame, and the quality of the event is highly connected the event cost
and apparently we don’t have a big budget, not to mentioned the good events
are seasonally held, am not sure if August is the best month in SF or not.
-Inbound approach: we held 3 joint-events, although the leads generated are
not big, however, it saves us energy to select qualified leads from the crowd,
which means, self-organized events have more qualified leads but need to
invest more in preparing and marketing the event.
10
9
14
15
0
0
0
2
1
0
0
10
0
0
5
11
9
1
0
19
13
12
26
8
0
1
1
1
1
0
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
1
2
3
4
5
6
Matt's
lead
analysis
Referral
Linkedin
Alumni
Joint-­‐events
Networking
Events

4. Linkedin: The end of the second week we started this approach, and it turns
out the best complement to networking channel yet. Over 35% of the leads are
generated from Linkedin and it fills up the time we have before going to
networking event in the evening. With the help from several websites:
https://www.crunchbase.com/
https://angel.co/companies
http://www.inc.com/inc5000?cid=so500015-logo
And also the help from the SalesNavigator service from Linkedin(paid service),
with TeamLink and InMail function, it's very easy to get connected to related
or key persons via Linkedin. I send around 80 Linkedin messages and I got 7
replies and once you are connected you get the personal email address of most
professionals.
And besides AIESEC Life this is the most effective way to get connected to
alumni in the bay area, esp. alumni that's not covered by AIESEC Life yet.
Alumni: Hans re-emphasize the importance of working with Alumni and got
the 1st raise for 4 TNs with an Alumnus at the first talk. At the end of the
project we got 26 leads from this channel, just 10% of the total leads but if we
had this priority we can definitely do more and US has a great alumni network
from its 60 years history esp. a lot of alumni are hitting the most impactful
time in their careers or they are planning to start their own business after a
successful role in a mature company.
Referral: Can't evaluate the ROI(we had 4 qualified leads) but an interesting
hypothesis, since we are launching new products/60th year anniversary, can
we have a national marketing campaign to inform all the partners, alumni and
ask for referrals?
d. Channel priority vs. resource allocation(right or wrong)
From the shown data we can roughly draw the ranking of the channels we
used in terms of effectiveness:
Top 1 Linkedin
Top 2 Joint-events(B2B Cooperation)
Top 3 Alumni
Top 4 External networking events
Top 5 Referrals
And it applies to short-term intensive sales project, which allows people fully
committed to the event with all their time and energy constantly.
The most efficient time for a sales member is normally the daytime. And we
can't really go to events because there are none, nor the other channels.
Quantitatively, Linkedin channel generates way more leads per hour than all

5. the other channels, which enables committed members to create the most
leads with excellent intensity and focus.
Besides Linkedin, if we invest enough time to prepare for Joint-events and
attract the right people to the event it's the best way to get the most result out
of it with a high quality, conversation rate.
Alumni are nice and resourceful, it would be great if we could talk to flag/star
Alumni in the area and ask for feedback in terms of strategy and who is the
best to approach to. However, this can cost a big part of the time and which I
believe building relations with Alumni is more important and good relations
are not build in a day or a short time, better leave it to Local Chapters and
encourage them to connect more.
External networking events should be researched perfectly and done before
the project begins, since now we know where to find these events, then we can
really be focused and best utilize our time and energy. And I would vouch for
those more exclusive events which might come with a high cost and intuitive
time to search them out but it's worth of it, take EO as an example, every
member of this organization must have at least 1M revenue every year. To be
honest, Eventbrite might not be the best channels; in stead, we should search
event organizers with reputation in Google or other channels.
It would be great if we could do more referral but in a more effective and
advance way because doing one by one it's not wise and it might trap you and
make 2 parties embarrassed if they don’t have a clue in mind already. B2B
marketing email campaign is the best and most efficient way and gives the
initiatives to the receiver to decide if they want to refer someone to us. 1
e. Market research(data) support: an adjustment of focus from all product to
just GE focused happened, we don’t know if we are really in the right direction,
we are iterating while implementing, so can not draw a conclusion on if the
conversation rate is reasonable or not.
-Goal vs. Gap
1
Existing case in the network: AIESEC India sent the MC Digital Marketing to attend the
inbound 2015 marketing conference, signed the contract with Hubspot company and is
shifting the focus to that, aiming to have a major breakthrough in corporate marketing area.
2
And
I
have
met
this
startup
named
Room.me,
and
it's
an
excellent
online
platform
for
people
to

6. Team
First of all, I believe that setting a goal in the beginning and breaking down
the goal based on process and time are the correct things to do, but it's better
to have it way before the project and should determinedly break down the
team goal to individual goal as well.
Second of all, we did not achieve the goal and the gap is 26 raises, and goal
achieved rate is just over 50%.
Failed to have a strict team review along with the gap analysis and adjusted
action plan to echo on the issues.
Had a midterm review with Shinee, but failed to have a proper one with the
whole team and because of the rise of the trend: the lack of ownership to the
personal goal set initially and failed to stick to the goal, it turned to a lower
adjusted goal in the 2nd half of the project which I believe it couldn't aspire
the right intensity and not motivating the member to strive for more.
• Average productivity is 11.3333 RA/person, not bad but should be higher
if this is a consistent project.
• Had the right predication for 4th week, which I believe that time should
be the most performing week for the team(after adapting to the new
market, new product and new way to do business, communicate with
people) and it over-achieved the goal of that week.
Self-analysis
My self-goal is 20 RA for the project, but I could improve a lot in terms of
1. Goal setting&pipeline tracking
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
1st
week
2nd
week
3rd
week
4th
week
5th
week
6th
week
26
working
days
Goal
Actual

7. 2. Get to know more about the member and motivating them to strive more
3. Firmly face the status quo when there's ambiguity and challenge it
Team success is everything, and it means personal success as well.
Follow-ups
-Accounts still need to close
-
-Accounts transition - MC level
-
-Refer to the spreadsheet online we used all the time
-Getting the local chapters on board for delivering the partnership
-Take shortlists to the company and get introduced
Learnings
-Personal understanding to the market&product
1. When we talk about the SF market, we should really talk SF Bay Area
instead, including Oakland in the easy bay, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Santa
Clara and San Jose in the south. By composing all these together, we have the
best target market for GE and a new target market for Global Talent
Program/GEP.
2. Most of the early stage startups are located in the city center in SF, because
there are more co-working space in the city and it's easier for them to attract
investment, the money is in the city; and another possibilities is near the Palo
Alto area(where Stanford is located), many tech-centered startups they will
take advantage from the rent and accessibility to excellent engineers and IT
talents. Meanwhile, if the startups get bigger and are well funded, they will
probably move to south because they need more space and it's better in terms
of cost.
3. Startup becomes an industry, there are event organizing companies for
startups, working space renting for startups, HR service companies, VC,
crowd funding company, startup media companies, IT outsourcing companies
for startups, marketplace/marketing service companies for startups, so the
startup market in SF is really mature and we need to choose our focus.
4. Startups need a deeper customized solution than more mature companies.
Because most of the time it's their first time running a startup and as much as
they want to focus on user/customer development and product iteration, they
don't have many ideas in hiring or hire what kind of people and how they can
benefit from the hiring. And it's not only a single hiring service, they usually

8. concern even more then the big companies as everything in their company is
inner-connected, they even haven't had a complete HR process or HR
infrastructure, they need us to provide a one-step and burden-free solution,
getting their opportunities advertised and shortlisted are far not enough.
5. Cost structure is necessary for them to make up the mind and cost analysis
comparing to tradition hiring agencies are important as well.
-Personally as a sales rep.
-Every effort spent is worthwhile, don't try to save time from one customer
to another, every customer deserves the same emphasis level from us if we
want to have a long-term partnership with them: I try to use template to
send email to the key persons of the targeted companies, and later on I
found the reply rate is very low; I believe the big reason is because I am
using templates, as smart as I think I am, they actually will find out or feel it
from the words and sentences that I am not working enough to get to know
them before selling to them, they want to get something that's specifically
designed for them. ------Don't reply too much on templates.
-How should we deal with customer relationships? - Prepare a solution
instead of reciting the selling point AI gives us without any customization
on what the customer truly needs.
It’s very personal.
You need to convince the customer about yourself way before your product,
if they don’t like you they will definitely not close with you cause our service
is designed to be delivered in a long time frame, which means the customer
has to deal with you many times, it’s not an one-off deal, thus, even your
product is freakingly good, if you are not awesome as your product and fail
to win the heart of your customer, you won’t close.
-Country background advantage
I learned that the startups that are run by Chinese in the bay area are not
that developed. Only a few of them is very successful while most of them
don’t really know how to develop users and communicate with the market
since it's hard for them to merge in the US market which is very unfamiliar
for them and they are disconnected with the Chinese market as well.
A better way to tap into the Chinese business market is to focus more on the
relatively big companies or big companies who set up their branches here.
They have more apparent need and more open to try our untraditional
service. In this scenario, a Chinese CEEDer's advantages can be best
utilized.
-Team(Team Management: team building, protocol, reporting&feedback circle&working
routine)

9. A team can achieve way much more than an individual, this sentence is
correct in most cases, and as much as we value team experience in AIESEC, I
have the following learnings about team.
1. Every team member must have a strong awareness about the concept of
TEAM.(Don't underestimate the power of having a strong team awareness or
even think it's not necessary because this is just a short project, if you want the
project to be successful and arrange a team for that, you have to be serious.)
2. Team leader needs to play a strong role in team building, provide the space
for team members to know about each other, hot-buttons, communication
style, goals, motivation and development needs, and most importantyly, what
kind of team experience they want and what is a successful team in their
opinions.
3. After this process, the team will have strong awareness and create sort of
protocol for the team, make sure the rules are not broken or disrespected.
4. Have a regular working routine and team reviews in the key touching points,
it will also save your life from separating when is working time and not.
5. Make sure the team has a feedback circle and everyone is fearless to give
and take feedback, never give up the team experience, sometimes it's even
more important to the goal achievement, I mean, if you had a good team
experience(clarified beforehand), there's no reasons that you wont achieve
your common goal.
-Project Peparation&Planning
Like I mentioned above, the preparation is very important to the success of
the project. And the elements of preparation and planning could be:
Planning
-Expectation and MoS(Direction/Strategy) from the MC
-Market research(multiple)
-Timeline with goals
-Draft plans with strategies
-Team and individual goals
-Works need to be done before the on site
Preparation
-Budget
-Accommodation
-Training&Induction for the project
-Available resources&supports
-Reviews from previous team(if applied)

10. -Local involvement
If applied, we can always take a big advantage from local level, they know
about the market and they have the credits and reputation already.
I found it extremely helpful when I am selling with a local, the potential
customers tend to give away their trust to the local people.
And because the project we are running is a short-term one, to make the
outcome sustainable is to let the local chapter involve as much as possible,
and they will grow ownership gradually with the constant involvement, they
are motivated to make it a long-term success.
Future Advice
-Team&Team Leader&Summer Project, reoccuring
1. There must be a strongly presence of the concept of TEAM and make it as
special as possible.
2. There must be a team leader with clear JD and expectation settings before
the project start or planning(his/her input is also very crucial to the success of
the project).
3. Team leader should involve in the team member selection process so that
he/she knows how to play on his/her strengths and have a complementary
team to work together in the best way possible.
4. Summer is the only time(I supposed) for entities like US/China to have a
team to run a summer project with 100% commitment, time, constant
involvement and full energy. And only with this way can we get the most result
out of it and the best out of these elite people, they are well developed and can
be the role model of the network to continue the success and eventually be
your leadership pipeline.
5. To make the summer project sustainably successful in the long run, we
should have this kind of sales team project every year with a fixed and
constant focus of market, and the legacy can be passed on so that we truly
strengthen our presence in the market and gain a solid reputation.
-Local Involvement
It's better to have the local's input and involvement, settle what kind of
involvement&benefits down through meetings and emails before we are
planning for the project so that we can know about their expectation and
commitment and how to work with them in the best way possible.

11. -SF&Bay Area as a target market
ü After spending 1 month and a half in San Francisco, I have the strong
feeling that SF Bay Area is one of the strongest symbols of the economic
of the states and there are already a lot of proofs that it deserves to be one
of the national focuses and be prioritized.
ü If GE is the national focus, then SF Bay Area is the best target market;
they have the best supporting system, infrastructure and environment,
atmosphere here, and the capitals are floating in from other place in and
out of the country.
ü And SF Bay Area, where Silicon Valley is located, is such a tempting
destination for interns to go, they will easily get the added value of having
their internship here.
ü And another best benefit is that there are so many tech giants and famous
big companies haven't be raised to be partners, there are strong reasons
to tap in the market, not to mention that we have a lot of US and
international alumni here.
-Product evolvement
-For Global Talent: it's good to see that we are working more and more with
B-end customers, like associations&chambers.
-We have passed the era to make one partners at a time, that's more for
early stage entities that they need to build the image and earn the
recognition from initial partners. It's time for scale sales.
-It's time to generate a lot more contents from B2B sales and then utilize
B2B marketing channel to strengthen our presence and bring GIP to more
previously unavailable markets.
-For GE: I like the idea of extending the duration of GE from 8 weeks on top
to 11 weeks max. It opens up a bigger market for us, becoz 11weeks/3 month
is way enough for companies to train the intern and hand over a project to
an intern and get tangible outcomes at the end.
-Meanwhile, we should really emphasize on the quick learning and fast
adaption traits of our interns when facing objections against the short
duration.
-Again, this is the best option a startup can get from a 3 month internship
already because most of then can not go with J1 visa.
-It should be a one-stop and burden-free solution to our customers, do
more surveys and interview more local/int'l interns to get to know what
kind of challenges startups are facing from growing their business to
managing HR issues. What it means? It means we could also include the
housing problems instead of letting the startup to do it, I am sure they are
definitely less experienced in this area than many other more mature
companies and it would be a headache for them. If we solve what they are
suffering from? They can't breath without us. Opportunities come from

12. difficulties and challenges, objections2.
Take this as an example, that startups are afraid of the reoccurring training
cost and intangible outcome of the internship, why not tackle on this issue?
l Provide a seamless solution.
2
And
I
have
met
this
startup
named
Room.me,
and
it's
an
excellent
online
platform
for
people
to
find
roommates
and
housing,
we
could
totally
consider
to
be
strategic
partners
with
them
and
we
will
save
a
lot
of
effort
for
locals
when
it
turns
to
accommodation
issue.

13. Instead of selling 1 TN at a time, we should sell them a team(and financially
it's cheaper), aiming to be the companion of their in-house interns program.
As present in the picture above, we will have 4 teams in a nature year, and
duration of each one of them is 3 months, there will be a transition period at
the last month/last 2 weeks of the previous team, so that it leaves enough
time for the old team to transit their project outcome, knowledge,
experience to the new team, get them trained and prepare to take over the
project, so that the company doesn't need to worry about the retention cost
and reoccurring training workload.
Another alternatives is even better, to retain the best of each team and
select him/her to be the team leader of next team, or even absorb him/her
to be a full time of your company, this is what we are striving to help
companies build the talent/leadership pipeline.
-Customer segmentation:
As long as we are still honoring the vision of AIESEC and the original
intention of initiating GE from AI, we should be confident and agile to the
US-customized version of GE.
Customizations can vary from duration, target market, service and so on.
Currently the global customer segmentation is startup, but besides startups,
can we have a second segment?
Type 1 target customers:
-Startups that are well funded - this type of companies they are cash rich
and time poor, so stop selling them how cheap the program is but selling
how efficient and burden-free this program is and how you can benefit right
away from one click of a button.
-Startups that are in early stage - this type of companies they need more
security, so you better demonstrate the cost structure and the exact ROI
plan and how it's a one-stop solution and how the company will benefit
from a long run.
Type 2 target customers:
-Institutes, labs and universities that has a lot of scientific/academic
research needs(actually we have Harvard as the best case already)
One of my LCVP told me that her friends and she managed to connect with
some professors in Stanford and got invited to join research projects under
the benefits of accommodation and visa support, it's unpaid and professors
don’t need to pay nobody service but they need to arrange something,
sounds familiar? It's exactly a perfect target for GE.
And the other day I even met this startup called Kubby in Santa Clara, they
are trying to build an online platform(web&app) to connect the professors
and students across the world, it makes the information so transparent and
the info.-exchange so fast, it solves the unmatched S&D.

14. We can definitely discuss the possibility to upscale Harvard Case's success.
-Life in SF
Life is cool and comfortable in SF and people here are more lay-back, they are
enjoying a chilling life but there are a lot of opportunities for young people
and new business can thrive because the acceptance of the culture.
From what I observe, a lot of companies they start working at 8 or even earlier,
and finish at 4, so it's better to utilize your time in the morning, sending
emails, and booking meetings.
Weather: SF in summer is cool and sometimes hot, so do prepare something
warm.
Do prepare to rely on the public transportation here, it can bring you south or
east, prepare to spend some time, like 2 hour to arrive the
meeting/networking, then 1-2 hours networking and then 2 hours back if you
are living in the city. Do buy a monthly card.
Watch several giants games or try to know the trends in SF so that you have a
lot of topics to talk with people when you are in networking events.
-US&MoC Partnership
• It will benefit a lot if MoC is sending sales talent to support on raising, esp.
raising for Chinese EPs, but the direction should be shifted to focus on big
partnership and raising Chinese Companies, Chinese immigrants or
Chinese entrepreneurs have a big impact in the city, so it's crucial to get
into the circle and figure out who to talk to.
• Better communication, co-creating for the plan, constantly tracking and
regular reporting would bring out a better outcome.
• Replicating the success in MoC to US is also very essential, like we
already have strong partnerships with Linkedin, Uber and Airbnb.
• The idea of sending the 2nd round of CEEDer to work on the
Alibaba/Huawei is my favorite, you might also think of including some
other traditional companies like Haier and Zhongxing, TCL, etc.
• All in all, try to make it constant and create a pattern that the next
generation can stand on and irate, then we can have more marginal
benefits.
Matt@NYC 13.09.2015