Long Live the Cold Call!

Listen Up people: cold calling is NOT dead nor is it going anywhere. I'm so sick of these wanna-be sales people writing all this garbage about how cold calling is dead. Frankly its because they have no idea what sales is all about. Yes, I'm going to say it: especially in silicon valley. You have all these brilliant people who are clueless about how to put in the work to generate their own new business. Things like how to prospect, make the calls, do the meetings, do the demos, SELL PEOPLE; aka following "the process". I believe this is a major reason why so many silicon valley start ups fail. This said, let me not pick on silicon valley, this is an issue across the world in general.

A cold call is simply reaching out to a prospect/lead that you approached rather than them coming to you. I call this Outbound Lead Generation or Outbound Prospecting. When a lead/prospect comes to you via a sign up, form submission, phone call, etc, I consider this an Inbound Lead. Generally its marketing's job to generate Inbound Leads; some people call this activity demand generation. Some companies have businesses that generate a high volume of inbound leads based on various reasons. Companies like Google and Facebook have more inbound leads than they can handle. Other companies are not as fortunate and need to spend more time conducting outbound lead generation. Alot of the time start ups face this challenge. They need the "hunter-type" sales guy; as opposed to the order taking, business development manager that just waits for leads to come in or is more focused on "doing partnership/channel deals".

Now, cold calling today does entail utilizing the tools and technology that are available now; which makes it easier than ever! Today we have Linkedin, Jigsaw, Hoovers, email, Twitter, phone, etc, etc. In the past you had a phonebook and a telephone. Today you can prepare yourself better, use multiple entry points, like for example sending the prospect an email and then maybe a Linkedin message, even perhaps tweet at him/her; and then follow up all this with a good'ole phone call. This phone call might sound something like "Hey John, its Jorge from Mopub. I sent you an email this week trying to figure out who to speak with about mobile adverting topics etc. I know you're pretty busy. Any idea who I can chat with about this stuff?" -- My tone is low and slow at this point. I am trying to make sure that this person can understand me and not feel unnecessary pressure.

Today's tools allows a sales person to call on the right people with the right titles, easier, quicker, with more accuracy, and cross-multiple channel/platforms. Today we use email more than telephone, especially during the less important periods of a conversation. My first step is to always try to find that prospects email somehow and send them a short and concise note. Either way, whether I get in touch with the prospect or not via email, my key objective is to get on the phone with them or schedule an in person meeting. You will hardly ever close any meaningful b2b business without a phone call or in person meeting.

As you can see whether you are picking up the phone or sending an email, these are all methods of cold calling. So keep up your cold calling its key to generating new business and being real salesperson.

Sales for Start Up Events

So I just did a sales for start ups event with a few Angelpad companies including: Pipedrive, which is a simple way for a company to manage its sales pipeline. Wishery, wants to improve customer service, sales and marketing with its Gmail add-on. And also our 500 Start Ups friends at LaunchRock, who allows you to setup a viral “Launching Soon” page in minutes. The event was sponsored by Angelpad and Brugan run and hosted at the Crittercism office in Soma, San Francisco.

The event was pretty fun. We had about 200 RSVPs for a Wednesday night, and about 80 people showed up which was pretty cool. Cooper Marcus, who is the founder and CEO of Wishery, did a kickass job of opening the night by demoing his product and explaining a bit of the stories behind the Feedgen and Privedrive teams. Timo Rein, myself, and The Southwestern Company sales trainer Wade Floyd, spoke to the crowd about leads, sales pipeline, and what is takes to be a top sales producer.

What is crazy about this whole night was that people seemed to really appreciate and take the information to heart. I am absolutely excited about doing the next few in the bay area and LA.

RIP Steve Jobs

Wow. It’s about 4:56pm on this San Francisco day…at some point over the last hour I heard folks in my SOMA office mentioning that Steve Jobs just passed away…so I did what we do now days and checked my Twitter..and well, sure enough it was true.
I then saw a tweet from someone referring to Apple.com’s landing page and this is what I saw:


Needless to say, it hit me immediately. A deep sadness overcame me -- which was followed by tears. A few weeks ago I saw a news story about Steve, which explained his life story. How he was adopted and how he was a dreamer. How he had this me against the world attitude and was always willing to risk everything for these dreams. And although, I knew of Mac, Apple and Steve Jobs, I never knew how his outlook reminded me of mine. And at 30 years, I became a Steve Jobs fan. I immediately felt like this hope inside that I was NOT crazy for spending most of my life dreaming and even though I didn’t know him personally, I felt a connection, and almost an obligation to continue to fight for dreamers like us.

RIP Steve Job. On behalf of all us dreamers and rebels out there – we will keep the tradition alive.

Day 219 - Resilience

So today marks the 212th day since I moved to San Francisco to build Feedgen. Its definitely been a long financial and emotional rollercoaster.

Its been a crazy few days. Aslam and I are both having issues with our apartments and Cass is sick with a fever yet still writing code somehow. Its funny how I have conditioned myself to look at every obstacle as simply a possible distraction and seem to plow through them with ease as if I expected it to happen. The thing is that I know crap will happen. I know that people will get sick, landlords will act up, and even girlfriends/boyfriends will break up with you. Yet I believe that our ability to be resilient under pressure is a huge key to our successes – both personal and in business. In actuality, my father was the person who taught me to persevere through the difficult times. He’d been doing it all his life. From his days as a Cuban Exile in the 1950’s to now being a great psychologist and businessman; there are not many things that seem to rattle him - Anyways.

So I guess the moral of today’s post is resilience. Merriam-Webster defines it as:

1 : the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress
2 : an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change

Number 1 makes me chuckle a bit. Just cause when building a company or trying to do something great it literally feels sometimes that you are being squeeze to the point of deformation! Things can get so tough on your mind, body, and soul that if you don’t stay focused and expect to power through obstacles they will knock you down.

Stay resilient folks. We’re almost there.

The Feedgen "Why"

I was listening to one of these motivation speaker guys the other day and the thesis behind his talk was trying to figure out the “Why” in what you do as a business person. And well, it led me to take a step back and analyze why the hell I was doing what I am doing. Why I spend 24/7 thinking and working on Feedgen and somehow find the time to work a full time sales gig at another start up while maintaining a high level of production on all tasks. And the reason is because there is a massive "Why" behind everything I do and somehow I have partnered with a bunch of guys who share similar eccentricities and passion for life and business!

Anyways, this is what I call: The Feedgen "Why".

We exist because we are a team of passionate entrepreneurs who love to build and inspire others. We are thinkers, dreamers, and people determined to change the world. We just happen to be passionate about building exciting sales software.

We want to change the way that people feel at work. We want our employees to be happy and inspired by us and the work that they do.

We are not perfect and will make mistakes, yet we will be committed to learning from our mistakes and continuing to grow as an organization and company culture.

We encourage entrepreneurship and thinking outside of the box. We promote the idea that every employee should be passionate about what they do. And if they’re not yet, we’ll help them figure it out.

My Angelpad Experience

I was a participant in the Spring 2011 Angelpad class, which happened to be the 2nd class conducted since the program was founded summer of 2010. My view on the program was perhaps a tad different from some of the other founders. I was about to be 30 years old and had spent my entire 20’s trying to build my own companies. In fact, since my junior year of undergrad, I have done everything from door-to-door sales to running a nightclub promotions company to launching a travel-based social network called myTripz.com; which by the way, was largely funded by my mother taking a second mortgage on her house, just to give me enough to cash to bootstrap the company (I love you mom!)... Angelpad was a complete no-brainer for me. I figure it was just what the doctor ordered -- luckily was I right.

There are a few things that I think Angelpad really did well:

• Mentors: Every start up typically finds a particular mentor that they essentially bond with. This mentor really starts to get close to the team and provides very granular advice.

• Social Proof: Thomas Korte is a great marketer. Between his connections and the brand he has built in a short period of time, it was very clear to us that doors would open if we built something that was compelling and performed well as a team.

• Product Market Fit: As several other founders have suggested, Angelpad focuses heavily on building the right product, at the right time.

• Connections: Based on participating in the program my network has grown tremendously.

Mopub: A REALLY great company.

The @mopub team is awesome. I believe this is the next big thing on the horizon. Great leadership and talent coupled with a fun environment (check out their facebook page -- do I see Mopub promo models?!) is a winning story.

Now I must admit that I am pretty close to the management team. I’ve known them for a while and have always known they would do something great. The thing is that I am NOT just supporting a bunch of friends; I honestly believe that Mopub will emerge as one of the leaders in its space. The market is for the taking and everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. The cool thing about Mopub is that they are a bunch of ex-Admob and ex-Google guys who really understand the space; in fact help helped define it and are now taking it to the next level.

I’m definitely excited to see what CEO Jim Payne and crew are working on over the next few months. Knowing these guys, it should awesome.