David Sells Goliath: Landing Your First Fortune 500 Customer

transcript

Greetings EntreFest!

John S. Casko, Jr.BFS Consulting

319-331-1995 (cell)jcasko@BFSWorkhorse.com

Where we will go…

• Start: Your Example• Think about a big potential customer you want

to talk to?• My background• What is Sales?

• The best purchase you ever made?• Pasteurizers• Complexity?

• Methodology• Live Demo

The Process…

1- What to look for

2- Where to look

3- How to Start Digging

Key Points…

Focus on:• Your most appreciative

customer• Their use case• What they value• The units they use to

measure that valueThis is your core competency

To find names:• Jigsaw.com !!• Company Websites,

news + events• Industry Conferences• Focus on Title/Position

To find Target Customers:• Think like a user/buyer• Companies who share

that use case• Their Competitors• The Supply Chain• Industry Associations• Advertising

To Engage…

Early stage needs authenticity• Be Brutally open• Be Hyper Selective

• Focus on the “yeses”• Forget the “nos”

Be respectful and to the point:• Who you are• What you do• Ask permission• 1:30 sec elevator pitch• “is that something you get involved

with?”• Just like looking for a job as a

teenager… “I have a lot to offer…”

Live demo…

Where do you want to go today?

ex: LightSprite…

Google Search DLS…

Website for Malvern…

Jigsaw for Malvern…

Contacts for Malvern…

Engage…What do you say?Part I (≤ 20 seconds)• Who you are• What you do…• Ask permission…

Part II (lemonade stand pitch)• Again, restate your company purpose• What your company does, core functionality/offering• How people use your product• Why you are calling them, specifically• Share the use case you had in mind• Ask “is that something you get involved with…” and then just be

quiet…• That is the yes/no qualifier

Engage…What do you say?Part II (cont.)

• Ask “is that something you get involved with…” and then just be quiet…• That is the yes/no qualifier

• If yes: Inquire and ask for help• How do you get involved with that?• What is the best way to go about introducing a company like

ours to your company?• How do you go about assessing new technologies such as ours?• So you are familiar with that use case?• How much of an issue is that for you?• What are you doing currently to solve that?• What should I do next?• Ref: Eric Reis, The Lean Start-Up/4 steps to the Epiphany:

• http://theleanstartup.com/

Part I…template (< 15 sec!)• “Hello, is this <their name>? Hi, <their name> , My name is <your

name> and I am the <your title> for <your company name>. We are a (optional : an early stage) <your company’s offering> out of <your location> + optional: and the <your center>, in the US.”

• “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

• If “yes” => “I’m very sorry, I will call you back…” (they may offer or suggest a time, or they may suggest that won’t be necessary…but neither is necessary.• OK to end the call quickly—show maximum respect for the

fact that they are busy• You can always call back, and always call back.

• If “no” => “Well, I can quickly tell you why I am calling.”• Engage part 2

Part I…example (< 15 sec!)

..\2013 03 IC CoLab March\Generic Call intro, 15 sec.m4a

Engage Part II…template• More background (shortened elevator pitch…)• How you thought your product might help them…• Why you thought to call them, specifically…• Is that something they get involved with?

• That is the yes/no qualifier• If yes: Inquire and ask for help

• How do you get involved with that?• What is the best way to go about introducing a company like

ours to your company?• How do you go about assessing new technologies such as ours?• What should I do next?

Engage Part II…example• Hello, is this _____ ?• Hi ____ my name is John Casko and I am the Development person

for an early stage natural language processing company called Hollingsworth Technologies out of Athens, GA, in the US.

• Did I catch you at a bad time?• As I mentioned, our company has emerging NLP technology that

has showed breakthrough potential in auto-summarizing or semantically indexing large volumes of digital text.

• This technology has demonstrated advanced functionality in pilot projects processing scientific content, medical content, USPTO content…etc.

• We think it might be particularly useful in auto-summarizing voice-to-text transcripts of surveillance audio tapes and email collections.

• I had you down as the e-Discovery Director for the DoJ, is this something you get involved with our would have any thoughts for us on?

Part II…example (< 1:30 sec)• Voice Recording• Call part II- B.m4a

Part II…example (email)

Lessons Learned…

Intro Comments• Correlations

• Germany is 90% the same as US• Want to focus on similarities (you can get the rest)• Recognize it is a process

• Thoughts on sales• What have you bought?• About finding, not persuading• That’s how I live with myself

• In order to find something you need to• Know what you are looking for• Know where to go look, and• How to put a pick into the ground..

• I can talk for months, where do you want to go?

Points• Cmdty v

Complex Soln• Acct mgmt v

prospecting• timelines

Questions?

Thank You!

Appendix: Tools

Tools: CRM…CRM- Contact/Customer Relationship Management• Tons of solutions…just choose something• Required to manage process, critical to keep track of

activity/sanity

• MS Outlook or equivalent (desktop/web/mobile)• ACT! By Sage (desktop/web/mobile) http://

na.sage.com/sage-act• Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Enterprise level (order, service tracking and more…)• Oracle/Siebel http://www.oracle.com/index.html• Salesforce http://www.salesforce.com/

Tools: Finding a Company/Customer…

• Google (really?!)• Ex: Dynamic Light Scatter => Horiba

• Find Competitors• Hoovers.com , et. al. http://www.hoovers.com/

• Industry Events/Activity/Professional Societies => seminars, tradeshows, • http://www.diahome.org/

• Sponsor activity/Advertising• News section of website, events section of website• Go where a customer is advertising…look for others

• Try the Supply Chain• http://www.sae.org/

Tools: Finding a Person…

• http://www.jigsaw.com/

Tools: Finding a Person…

• LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/• Company Websites Ex: Wyatt• Wyatt => About US

http://www.wyatt.com/company/about/about-wyatt.htmlÞ Executive Team

http://www.wyatt.com/company/executiveteam/executiveteam.html

• News => http://www.wyatt.com/events/news/events.html

• Events =>• http://www.wyatt.com/events/news/news.html

End….

Isms…• Pasteurizers: Finding not persuading..• Not Black Magic• Bell curve• De gustibus…• Purpose/function• One customer…• Reasons!• Not about price..• No one likes being told…

Points• Cmdty v

Complex Soln• Acct mgmt v

prospecting• timelines

Thank You!

And….

…Go Irish!!

Oops, I mean…

Go Hawkeyes!

David Sells Goliath: Landing Your First Fortune 500 Customer

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