Disqus - Latest Comments for larosam

Re: Top 5 things missing from most entrepreneur pitches

larosam — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:18:51 -0000

I think whats missing from most pitches is the detailed SALES STRATEGY. Who is going to buy it, for how much, how do you reach them (direct sales? marketing?). What does sales cost you? How will you comp your sales staff? Will you do all the sales yourself? Can you realistically do all of this yourself without a sales staff? Why would anybody actually PAY for this thing you've built. Is it cool enough to actually spend money on - or is it just nice to have as long as its free. (and that's OK if your model includes someone else paying for it).

I know its cool these days to invest in start-ups that don't have a defined business model, but that's only going to work for a few. The vast majority should be thinking about sales from day one. This then ties directly into #4. Knowing your sales strategy will help you in knowing when you need your next round of funding (and also how big this round should be)

Re: Startup Lessons - Having industry momentum at your back

larosam — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:07:38 -0000

Charlie,

I think this is a great post-mortem as to why some VC's weren't so hot on your idea; however, you did raise money, so not all VC's thought the way you describe above. I think it would be great to contrast what your investors saw in your business and why they decided to invest. Did they see something in the business that others didn't see? Did they invest because they believed in Charlie? etc..

Re: Sales Lessons from a 6 year old: It’s all about the cash

larosam — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:47:23 -0000

John,

There are a rare breed of salespeople that value things like equity in exchange for sales, but its not typical - and it would be more focused on the high-end VP of sales type. The big issue is that a salesperson might only make $40,000 / year - but he/she actually expects to make $150,000 or more based on performance. What you can't do, it expect that person to make $40,000 and then equity because they just won't be able to live on it easily and the competing offers out there that will make them actual cash will be too tempting.

The problem with the criticism of this post is the fact that they are pointing out a major difference in the compensation structures and motivation of the general workforce and salespeople. Dan's video talked about how financial incentives narrowed the thinking of the creative people. This is the whole point of sales compensation plans. You want to channel the efforts and activities of the salespeople to drive the business results of the company - and you are willing to pay for it.

I think you can get somewhat creative with a compensation plan that provides non cash incentives (i.e. equity, trips, etc) but I don't think that these will work in the long term - unless you are prepared to pay a much larger base salary than normal.

I actually think that the confusion over this post is enlightening as to why many non-sales management can't provide the correct incentives to a sales team. They think we are like the rest of the work force, and we aren't.

Re: Sales Lessons from a 6 year old: It’s all about the cash

larosam — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:02:39 -0000

I I don't necessarily disagree, but the point was about salespeople - who ARE motivated by financial incentives and SHOULD be motivated by financial incentives.

You can criticize my parenting for sure - but I claim to be an expert sales guy - not an expert parent!

In this talk, Dan says that when you put certain incentives on - you narrow the focus of thinking. EXACTLY!! You WANT to focus the salespersons thinking and have them focused on MONEY. Both for themselves and the company.

Salespeople are not like the rest of you. If you want to motivate a salesteam, you need to re-do all of these tests with only salespeople.

If I was presented with the candle problem, I'd sell the candle and use the money to buy a dripless candle!

Sales people are NOT NORMAL!! We operate on a different frequency. Sometimes 100% of what we do is based on financial rewards. True - may not work for most people - and maybe I'm screwing up my son (although I think he is a future salesguy), but I stand by my position that the right financial rewards drive sales.

Re: Misha Ava Vaynerchuk

larosam — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:39:38 -0000

Gary,

As amazing as these days are - this isn't even the best part. Wait until she runs to you screaming, "DADDY!" and wraps her arms around you.

Its just gets better every day. Enjoy

Re: Sales, the super secret to startup success

larosam — Fri, 29 May 2009 10:11:19 -0000

Evan,

Great post! I'm humbled by your kind comments about me, but all these points are spot on.

Sales is critical and REALLY hard for a start-up.

As for #2 and #5, in choosing the right leader, its important to think about who you hire. Do you have enough to interest a super VP of sales, or are you going to waste money on that. In a shameless plug for QuotaCrush, that's what I'm doing... helping those companies that need leadership but don't yet have enough traction (or cash) for a full-time VP of sales. I wrote a post on this topic in detail: http://www.quotacrush.com/index.php/2008/12/18/...

Re: Tech people can't sell

larosam — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 08:58:39 -0000

OK - so here is the secret behind me... I started as a programmer. I was a "technie who could talk" and I put down the compiler to figure out how to sell because I started a company and needed to sell my product.

So - lets have this discussion tomorrow nite but I believe I have an interesting perspective on tech guys and sales guys.

Re: Common Email

larosam — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 11:27:53 -0000

I'll try to make a comment other than spellchecking - but "Bootstapping" is "BootStrapping"

Of course, you knew that my comment would be sales-based, but I think your most important point is "gaining adoption or customers." Today... its about the ability to show that you can get to cash-flow break-even. Having a "cool" product isn't enough. You need to show that people will PAY for it - or there is some other model (data, advertising, etc) that can cover your costs.

Re: The value of a rolodex

larosam — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 13:47:37 -0000

Actually, the "Teach to Fish" model is the entire idea behind QuotaCrush right now, so I agree wholeheartedly.

Your post is great too BTW - but you forgot to include a link to it, so here it is:
http://keepingperspective.wordpress.com/2009/02...

Re: Sales Presentations: No demos….EVER!

larosam — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 12:49:37 -0000

OH so exactly true! When you have sales management that doesn't get the sales process, you can see them using metrics like this to judge activity.

But... its not about activity - its about results.

If I have a salesperson that comes to the office early, does 22 demos a day, meets with 1,000 companies in a year - and hits 10% of quota, he will probably not have a job the next year.
If I have a salesperson who takes an extra 4 weeks of vacation, but has happy customers and hits 200% of quota, he will be retained.

Proper sales management is key.

Re: Start with the right sales relationship

larosam — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:42:08 -0000

Yes 1.0 indeed. BTW - Wamu is Chase now!

Re: Angel Investing in 2009

larosam — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 21:34:55 -0000

Knox,

Great post! I hadn't seen that (although I should have - it was marked as unread in my RSS reader).

I suggest all entrepreneurs reading our post hop over to Knox's blog and read his point.

Mark

Re: NY Tech Meetup

larosam — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:15:05 -0000

Nate is the logical choice for NYTM Organizer. His ability to bring great people together has been proven over and over again. He's got my vote!

Mark LaRosa
QuotaCrush

Re: Power Alley

larosam — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 14:23:44 -0000

Nate,

You are spot on. As with everything right now - we need to figure out how to do more with less. This is a time of coordinating and making the most of what we have already - to provide the biggest bang.

And we're entrepreneurs, right? So producing something amazing with no additional investment is something that many of your readers understand!

Re: Business Development vs Sales

larosam — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:26:38 -0000

Exactly. You should always be building trust, and unless you are actually there to build a partnership, you should not be claiming that you are. Its dishonest, and you will actually see sales decrease because of it.

Re: The Enterprise Sale for Start-ups

larosam — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:41:28 -0000

Ryan,

What a great comment. I neglected to elaborate on the fact that you can't let the enterprise bully you around. "Flexibility" as I talk about, does not mean, let them walk all over you. You need to understand your limits, but when you have identified a win-win, thats when you can allow for some flexibility.

I wrote a post on No Free Trials (http://www.quotacrush.com/index.php/2008/05/12/...) where I talk about one of the strategies that I used to get enterprises to commit.

Its a fine line... you want their money... but I agree, not at any cost.

Re: Business Development vs Sales

larosam — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:36:35 -0000

Laura,

Its true, that often its for the "comfort" of the sales person, but thats part of the problem. Unless you recognize what your role is, and are comfortable with it, you will have problems in sales. If you see yourself as a business development person, and your prospects see you as a business development person, then there is less of a definition around what you are trying to do. If you are charged with a quota, you need to sell. The joke is always, "A business development guy is a sales guy that can't close a deal." I don't necessarily agree with that - but the origin of the joke is that when you classify yourself as a business development person, when you are really a sales person, you actually put yourself in a position where it becomes harder to ask for the sale - because you have positioned yourself as establishing a long term partnership for the greater good of the companies. "Business Development" tagged people, that are actually sales people, are in my experience those that are afraid to ask for the close - afraid to ask for the signature on the dotted line.

My exact point is that there is nothing wrong with being a salesperson, and if you are not comfortable with that moniker, then you might actually be too timid to actually ask for the sale - and therefore, perhaps shouldn't be in sales. Maybe you would be better positioned in a business development role finding new channels and partners for the company.

Re: Shiny Rocks

larosam — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:42:17 -0000

Ah yes - more great uses for Shiny Rocks. Perhaps I should have titled this post "Like a Rhinestone Cowboy"

Re: Fear is a four letter word

larosam — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 19:33:42 -0000

Ryan,

I would agree that if your nervous that you have fear, and I would also agree that we are talking about the lack of confidence, but it many instances I would indeed classify sales fear as being scared. Scared of rejection - which is why you don't call the CxO, why you don't ask for the order, and why you don't properly negotiate.

Mark

Re: Why companies should smile when they pay commissions

larosam — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 20:18:45 -0000

Julien,

Exactly correct! Upon a re-read I certainly didn't make it obvious that the reason the comp plan was designed correctly was because it DID infact inspire the correct behavior.

I also focused heavily on the cost of the plan - not pointing out that the end-result was amazing for our company.

Re: What’s a Sustainable College Look Like?

larosam — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:42:49 -0000

Since I'm on the Board of Trustees of my university, I thought I'd check it out. There are some fairly large holes in the report and some certain strangeness. For example, they gave us an F in Endowment because "there is no known disclosure of the endowment amount" yet they list the amount of the endowment in the summary.

Re: Swingers make bad salespeople…

larosam — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:45:49 -0000

I think as long as you are constructive, its OK. I wouldn't ding someone for believing something different from me - heck that's what makes America great!

As for your comment "its all going out there whether we like it or not" is all the more reason to make sure you protect your personal brand all the time.

Re: Open Systems, Open Data, Transparency

larosam — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:36:23 -0000

Thanks for the mention Fred. We certainly agree with the comments. We too are most excited about the data. We’ve been up and running for years now, so it’s good to see we’re now at the point where we have enough data to start providing relevant reports. And it’s also great to see that the VC community is getting so excited about getting on board as well – this time next year we should be able to report on some very neat VC stats as well.

Angelsoft is a big fan of transparency as well, and never before has anyone been able to offer so much insight into the early stage investor community. Not only are we doing this through our data, but also through the entrepreneur tools we’re providing. The entrepreneur angst is significantly reduced for those VCs and angel groups using Angelsoft because of transparancy.

Mark LaRosa
VP of Sales, Angelsoft

Re: The genius behind never logging into the software I was selling

larosam — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 21:06:18 -0000

In order for this theory to work exactly this way, you need to have sales engineers in place - someone that can truly understand the inner workings of the software and can work that through with the customer. What we wound up doing at Air2Web was the salespeople worked the value with the decision maker - and the details of HOW it got done was done with the SE (Sales Engineer). If the SE identified something that was sold that really couldn't be done, we would circle back and try to solve it. But, if I did my job correctly, the customer understood WHY they were doing business with us, and bought into the ultimate value that A2W was delivering - and therefore some small workarounds were usually OK.

Currently, my sales guys don't have that luxury and have to both serve as sales person and sales engineer. Therefore, they have to log in and understand all the inner workings of how to do everything in the software.

That said, what I do try to teach them is that they need to really focus on selling value over function. Software can always change (and does), so what you need to make sure is that you don't put an imagined obstacle in front of yourself regarding HOW the software does something.

For example, in our software a customer may think that he needs a notification to work a certain way that it doesn't. Well, we all know that we can always change and add that feature. But if they buy into the fact that Angelsoft is going to change their world like it has for so many investment groups - then living with a small change in their process is worth it.

In an ideal world, I think I would have my sales guys use engineers and focus only on working with customers at the high level and sell value. One of the first things I did at Angelsoft was to replace the salespitch from a "walk thru the software" to a "feature overview / value of ecosystem" pitch. Given that we don't have sales engineers, I think that my team now does a great job of selling value and showing function next.

Re: Change the World

larosam — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:52:14 -0000

Nate,

This is a great question to ask yourself when starting a business and its so forward thinking that it really forces the right thinking process.

As a corollary to this, entrepreneurs also need to ask themselves from the customer perspective: What's in it for me?

If you haven't thought about why the customer would even care about this product that is going to change the world, then can you ever sell it? Will anyone ever adopt it? Have you implemented it correctly? Is there even a reason to pick up the product. Is there an alternative that is not as world-changing - but 40x easier to use/implement.

Mark