Once upon a time, I joined a 3 man startup to sell Intrusion Detection Service. I realized in my first week that our product was vaporware – we had no software, no service and no customers.
But we needed to generate sales so we could make payroll and run the business. Not to mention, I needed to my commission. So we decided to sell network security consulting until we could build our product.
We had a few challenges to overcome:
- Nobody wanted to spend money on anything that wasn’t mission critical. The dotcom crash had soured everyone on technology. The stock market was in the toilet. Businesses were laying people off.
- We were an unknown startup with no track record, no customers, no marketing and a weak website.
- I had no local business contacts or industry contacts.
If you’re working for a startup today, some of these challenges may sound familiar.
Over the next 12 months, we sold $300K of network security consulting and filed for a patent on our Intrusion Detection Process. Six months after that the company was acquired by a larger firm for $3M.
I’m going to break down how we we went from $0 to $300K in sales in twelve months and how you can apply these techniques for your business.
Create a Simple Sales Process
Since I was the only person doing sales, I made a simple sales process:
- Suspect – Any company that might be a potential buyer.
- Prospect – A Suspect whom I had spoken to and qualified for need, influence and a potential opportunity.
- Opportunities – Prospects with a real opportunities where I had met with the right people, developed a solution and submitted a proposal.
Then the hard work began.
Identifying 500 Suspects
I started by pitching network security consulting to any business that would talk to me (pre-SUSPECTS). I spoke to people at trade shows, at Chamber of Commerce events (ugh!), friends of my coworkers, bankers, insurance agents, sales reps and even competitors.
After a few months of meeting with people, sending proposals, losing many “deals” and winning a few, we were able to define our “ideal” SUSPECT.
- Mid-market sized company with 1000+ computer using employees. Small businesses couldn’t afford us. Large enterprises wouldn’t talk to us.
- Local headquarters with central IT Management. This meant were were not dealing with a small branch location and that IT Management had a direct line into corporate to obtain budget.
- No financial distress. We ruled out companies going bankrupt, laying people off or in struggling industries.
I created a spreadsheet of Suspects by searching Hoovers, the Russell 2000, the Fortune 1000, the local newspapers and the South Florida Business Journal’s Book of Lists. This was a manual process.
- I scrubbed the list to remove suspects who didn’t meet our criteria.
- I added or removed companies as I found more info.
- I searched for IT Managers at these companies using LinkedIn, google, and cold calling the companies.
Since we had no inbound, Suspects were my “leads”.
Narrowing the Suspects to 50 Prospects
I worked Suspects by emailing them, calling them and talking to them at local business events. My goal with Suspects was to have a conversation with an IT Manager so I could qualify them as a Prospect or remove them from my list.
All of my sales calls were onsite because I was good at face-to-face discussions and exploring for areas where we could help.
Whenever possible, I worked Suspects by industry. This was surprisingly effective.
If I met with one real estate developer, I’d contact all the other ones saying, “I just met with ABC Development to discuss a project and thought you might want to meet as well.”
I used the same thing when we landed a customer. Name dropping like this helped us land our largest customers in real estate and finance.
Also, because we were working a local territory, some of our Suspects knew each other. Others were curious to hear what their peers at competitors were doing (we handled this appropriately).
Creating 10 Opportunities
I never had more than 5-10 opportunities open at a time.
We’d start with a small project for a new client. Then, every time, we’d get opportunities for additional work and larger projects.
All of the work was done by me, the owner and his network security engineer. All of us were highly-seasoned professionals so our clients loved us (thankfully!)
Winning Deals
We never pitched a big project to a Prospect. Instead, I’d recommend starting with an assessment or a small project (~$5K). This made is easier for a prospect to sign off on a deal.
After we completed the first project Iw were able to propose and win larger projects ($30K – $50K+).
Tips
- The most important work is meeting and having a conversation with Suspects and Prospects. I ran this entire process using Excel, Word and Outlook. Today it could be easier with various CRMs and cloud tools, but don’t get bogged down in automation. Do only what is absolutely required to get these conversations.
- I wasn’t measured on leads, conversions or opps – only real sales $ mattered. This, plus being responsible for the entire end to end sales process, ensured I had a high close rate of over 50%. I couldn’t afford to waste time on opportunities that weren’t well qualified.
- You are guaranteed to fail at some things. We tried many things to build the business. We spoke at trade shows. We went to networking events. We asked former colleagues for leads. We created a network security breakfast series. We hired a PR agency. We met with our angel investor who gave me my most effective cold email script. Some of these were a total bust. But we had to try them all in order to figure out what worked and what didn’t.
If you are starting from $0 or working to grow sales in a industry that is not “top of mind”, it may be time to simplify your sales approach.
You’ll notice that none of the activities I mentioned above cost a lot of money. They are all well within the control of a small sales team and even a single sales rep.
Give it a shot and let me know how it turns out.
Good luck and good selling,
Steve
PS. Special thanks to Robb Fluet @ ClientSavvy for responding to my questions in a recent article. His response gave me the idea for this post.