Category Archives: Other

Other

It took 9 years for Paul Valthaty to become an overnight star

If you have been following cricket, there’s a new star in town: Paul Valthaty. After 2 tremendous innings with the Punjab Kings XI, his stock has risen several fold.


“An immensely talented batsman from his teenage days, Valthaty saw some of his best years go by after suffering a career-threatening eye-injury in the U-19 World Cup in 2002.”

Rising like a phoenix, Valthaty with his firing batting display has topped the list leaving behind legendary Sachin Tendulkar.

For close to 9 years he stayed in the sidelines, perfecting his art and working hard on his game.

For many more in the sidelines, he is hope that perseverance pays off.

The best way to be successful is to get lucky. To get lucky, never give up.
Other

Is everything really better “social”?

Read a very timely post from zillow on 6 common mistakes made by home sellers. There’s a particular piece that I found very interesting:


“ Yet, many people just hire someone based on one friend’s recommendation and wind up frustrated during the process.”

Here is a conflicting piece from Search Engine Watch.  

“The recommendations of our friends and colleagues have always been one of the most influential drivers of sales.”

So, if you are like most other people, which one do you really believe?

There’s reason to doubt the Zillow piece, since they are a vendor in the space and its in their best interest to suggest you interview 3 real estate agents (they probably get a lead referral from the real estate agents).

There’s also reason to doubt Search Engine watch, since they have reason to promote more social media usage overall. 

Either way, the question is “What is the impact of a friend / colleague opinion on your purchases”?

The answer probably depends on the friend, what you are trying to buy and how relevant that friend’s opinion is on the item you are trying to buy.

Over the last 4 years, I have used facebook fairly extensively and primarily for keeping up with friends and colleagues. I rarely use LinkedIn and dont find any real value from it.

I still use the phone (primarily text message) or email, though when I want recommendations from the same friends I am on facebook with.

So yes, I am socially connected, but most of what I am trying to buy cant be published. For two reasons

a) I dont like to have an immediate list of twitter followers immediately call or send me a message offering their services

b) I feel I get more balanced opinions (less flowery, with many caveats) when I communicate one-one.

But really, is everything really better social?
Other

The “real” count of total active Internet users in India

IAMAI along with IMRB just completed a Digital Commerce report for India. Some highlights:

1. Total number of users in India (claimed by TRAI) = 81 Million
2. Total number of users active (once a year, this is a guess) = 52 Million
3. Total number of active users (once a month, per report above) = 17.5 Million
4. Total users who have claimed to have bought something online (per report above) = 7.4 Million
5. Total users who have (Caris report, Sandeep Aggarwal ) transacted online = 18% of 52M = 9.36 Million
6. Total broadband users in India according to TRAI = 12 Million (I presume this is home users, not office)
7. Total number of users with broadband data card (According to social analytics company Vangal) = 3.2 Million
8. Number of active mobile Internet users (according to Juxt Consult)  = 15 Million
Conflicting numbers from Google.
9. 40 Million users access broadband Internet from work
10. 30 Million users access Internet from CyberCafe
11. Consistent with 11 Million users with broadband from home
12. 40 Million users access Internet from mobile phones
If we assume more than 1 person users Internet from home and only 1 person uses a data card, there are at least 20 Million active users of the Internet from PC’s. Including about 20 Million active mobile GPRS users, accounting for 55% of them to be dual users (Both PC and mobile), there are a total of 30 Million active Internet users in India.

Update: There are 16-20 Million facebook users with India as their primary country (in profile). Source: Indus.
Other

The 3 best tactics of relationship selling used by smart technical entrepreneurs

The # 1 thing I like to tell most technical founders and entrepreneurs who want to learn how to sell is to “build strong relationships“. This usually leads to the question – “How do we do that?”.

Rather than focus on the strategy and the benefits of building relationships alone, I’ll outline the top 3 tactics I use to build relationships with potential clients.
1. Sell yourself as an individual first. A novice sells the product or service they are building and focus purely on the benefits and features of the offering. A smart relationship sales person realizes that the old pithy “People buy from people they like and trust” is true. They sell their background, experience, vision, knowledge and track record first. When you are with a prospective customer, talk about the context of how your product helps them. Give them your personal background of how you have seen the solution help others.
The best sales people sell themselves first and get the customer to buy into them instead of what they are selling.

2. Tell customer stories and provide examples. I believe every statement or question a client has should begin with a short answer to the specific question, but immediately by the phrase “Let me give you an example. One of our customers…” If you do not have existing customers to provide examples, provide examples of how customers might use the offering to their benefit.
3. Adding value beyond the transaction. Every person buying understands that the sales person needs to sell their offering. Every buyer, though has a lot more “problems”, “issues” and “opportunities” besides the solution the sales person provides. The best way to build lasting relationships is to help others on things that are outside of your scope of the transaction. Here are some examples:
a) If you learn of new opportunities (employment or contract) that are available to your prospect, from talking to other clients, let them know about those.
b) If you attended a new conference or seminar and have written down the top takeaways from that conference which you believe might be useful to that client, share it with them.
c) If you hear about new tools, web services or blogs and books that helps your client, even though its not what your company does, let your prospect know about them.
d) If your prospect can benefit from introductions to other people in your network, make those connections. Even if you get no immediate benefit from those introductions, the trust it creates is enormous.
e) If you attend a seminar and get some great giveaways (such as logo t-shirts, bags, schwag etc), offer them to your prospect.
The benefit of selling yourself first is that even if what you are selling is deficient (product has missing features, pricing is higher than competition, etc), the customer will work with you to fix those “issues”.
Other

Startup sales people are not responsible for revenue, but for payroll

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In a large company, sales professionals, each have a quota to achieve each quarter (some monthly). The way their compensation is structured, nearly 60-70% of their total take home pay (On target earnings or OTE) is base and the rest is commission. For startups its usually 50% base and 50% commission if bootstrapped and 70% base, 30% commission if funded.

In larger companies since multiple sales people report to a manger, the manager’s quota (or target) is a combination of the individual sales reps times an achievement factor (usually less than 0.6 or 0.7). This ensures that even if 60-70% of the sales people meet their quota, the manager meets his overall quota.
Even if 30% of the sales people dont hit their target, the company might hit their quarterly revenue goals.
In a startup even if ONE sales person misses their target, the company, usually misses payroll.

Startup sales people are not responsible for revenue, they are responsible for payroll in most cases.
Startup sales people are evangelists, hustlers and relationship builders all in one.
If you find one of these sales people, dont ever let them go. 
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How technology entrepreneurs should hire sales people

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In the initial days of your startup (when you are less than 5 customers) I believe the founders should do most of the selling. Whether it is to investors, potential employees, prospects, the founder(s) knows the solution and the market need best.

So what happens after you have exhausted your personal contacts and you need to ramp up sales? As most founders do, you look to hire your “first” sales person.
There are many kinds of sales people, so there is not one answer to the question “Who should we hire?”. Broadly:
1. The Process jock (aka, follow steps in sequential order). This person typically has been at a large company in your space. Has listed over 10-12 different “sales methodologies” that she’s trained in – Spin Selling, VITO selling, etc. She will ensure that 100 leads will be tracked in your SFA tool, gives you great reports and also can help hire (albeit in a limited fashion).
Hire this person if: you have figured out the exact market,  the target account list and you need someone to scale up operations. This person is not good at being an evangelist or at consultative selling or vision selling. If your product is still one of those that most people dont “get” immediately, dont hire this person.
2. The Hustler (aka lets do a deal). This person typically has been in services organizations or has sales positions in multiple startups. Their resume looks like a menu from Subway. Some main companies, but lots of deals listed.
Hire this person if: You need deals of all sorts. This person wont be able to hire or scale your sales operations. She might get you into deals that are not a perfect fit with your value proposition, but will get you deals.
3. The Leader (aka high level sales executive). This person has at least 2-3 Vice President titles on their resume. They have multiple sales people that are connected to them on their LinkedIn profile and typically over 500+ connections. Their resume talks less about # of quarters they consistently delivered on their quota, but more about the # of people they managed, # of sales offices run etc.
Hire this person if: The product fit to your market exists and you need to build a large sales organization fast. You will have to hire a marketing head to ensure this person has a customer presentation, a demo, a proposal template, etc. 
4. The Industry Maven (aka have a great rolodex): This person has been selling to the same companies and industry for over 15 years. They would have represented multiple companies (sometimes even competitors) during their career, but their coverage of titles sold to would be small. They have a few good relations with customers they have sold to and are looking to leverage them.
Hire this person if: You find that a certain verticals or geographies have more of a need and are expressing more interest in your solutions than others. This person is good if you have a limited set of initial target customers and many of them are part of a clique (those who buy if the others buy).
5. The Relationship manager (aka technical light-weight). This person builds great relationships. They tend not add too many folks as connections to their LinkedIn profile. During your interview, they will consistently talk about the key relationships they have with clients, and how they have known them for years.
Hire this person if: Your product does not need too much pre-sales (technical) support to sell. These resources tend to be fairly light with technology and the latest trends, so you will need to hold their hand more than necessary for the first few deals.
I tend to hire the Hustlers first, then the Relationship folks and finally the process and Executives. Have you hired any of these types of sales people? What has your experience been?
Other

A startup’s take on How “Sign up for beta” page is a recipe for Spam blocks

I like Robert Scoble. I have known him for several years. Met him at several conferences, at Ritz Carlton (Half Moon Bay) over water and lemonade, etc. He is someone I consider an influencer.  Among many technology founders, I know of, he’s their first stop before they hit TechCrunch, and other tech blogs. 

If you are a startup founder and use his blog as a trendspotting tool, great.
His latest post on “If you are in stealth mode“, setup a sign up page so you get can get potential users to sign up for beta access, is interesting, but there are too many caveats.
I advice a few startups and one of them is started by 2 technical founders 6 months ago. Interesting product idea and great guys. They setup their “launch page” with a brief 2 sentence note of what they did and provided the obligatory “Signup for our beta access, so we’ll let you know when we are ready”. In 3 months they got 800+ signups, mostly thought word-of-mouth.
They launched 5 months after they started their company. Of the 850 “signups” they had, they decided to send emails to a few providing them beta access. They decided to do it “first come first served” so some of the “Signups” had not been touched in 3-4 months. 
33% of the people did not remember they had signed up, resulting in them being categorized as “Spam email”. They tried keeping up with the other folks by sending them “great blog posts and relevant content” once a month, to find that over 18% unsubscribed, citing too much email.
Bottom line: Users are fickle and have short memories. Email beta launch lists are GREAT only if you have already launched and want to “control” beta access OR if you are going to launch in a month or less.
Pre-launch websites in my experience are better as blogs, which have relevant industry news and information which allows readers to follow via an RSS reader, not via email. That way, when you launch, you get a chance to post about it too.