A summary presentation from the book Sales for Startups

1. Sales for Startups:
Accelerate Your Success with a
Better Go To Market Strategy
Matt Heinz
President, Heinz Marketing Inc
matt@heinzmarketing.com
@heinzmarketing

2. Housekeeping
• Copy of this deck
• Offers for you
– 10 minute brainstorm
– Successful Selling
– Modern Marketer’s Field Guide
• Email me or bring me a business card with
what you want
– It’s that simple…

3. Last Slide First
1. Understand your customer, product & objective
before planning (let alone executing)
2. Use the resources you already before spending
money
3. Review & assess/adjust your priorities, focus
areas and execution at least weekly
4. Fire lots of bullets
5. Manage actively and openly
6. Sales & marketing is too important to leave to
salespeople and marketers

4. Five common startup sales
mistakes
1. Hiring a VP of Sales first
2. Spending money on marketing too early
3. Building a sales process that doesn’t map
to how your customers buy
4. Selling beyond the early adopters
5. Building a sales team too fast, too early

5. Four steps to a better plan
1. Do the math (quantify what success
looks like)
2. Create a clear customer profile
3. Map the sales and buying process
4. Plan to fire lots of bullets

6. Every initiative is filtered through:
• Customers
• Products
• Objectives

7. Prospect Engagement Funnel
Customer Targets (based on persona profiles)
Network / Open Community
Channels: Twitter, Facebook, Blog, LinkedIn
Goal: Drive Registration
Drip Marketing
Channels: Email Newsletters, CRM System
Goal: Drive Active Prospects
Active Sales Cycle
Channels: CRM, 1:1
Goal: Sell
New
Customer
Next Step Accelerator Ideas
Network-exclusive access to content
Value-added special offers
Discovery events
White papers, top ten tips, etc.
Testimonials, Success Stories
Profile-Specific Messages
New product/service offers
New Opportunity Alerts
1:1 with Existing Customer
In-Market Events
Referral & Tell-a-Friend Offers
Network / Community Invites

8. Calculating what you need
Assumptions
Product A ASP
Product B ASP
Opp/Close %
Lead/Opp %
Product A CPL
Product B CPL
$
$
$
$
Q1 2010
50
8
58
Product A Sales #
Product B Sales #
Total Sales #
Product A Sales $
Product B Sales $
Total Sales $
150
25
175
Q3 2010
63
10
73
Q4 2010
69
11
80
TOTALS
238
38
276
170
28
198
190
30
220
210
33
243
$2,250,000 $2,550,000 $2,850,000 $3,150,000
$1,250,000 $1,375,000 $1,500,000 $1,625,000
$3,500,000 $3,925,000 $4,350,000 $4,775,000
Product A Leads
Product B Leads
Total Leads
Product A Lead
Budget
Product B Lead
Budget
Total Lead Budget
Q2 2010
56
9
65
$ 742,500 $ 841,500 $ 940,500 $1,039,500 $ 3,564,000
$ 412,500 $ 453,750 $ 495,000 $ 536,250 $ 1,897,500
$1,155,000 $1,295,250 $1,435,500 $1,575,750 $ 5,461,500
Product A Pipeline #
Product B Pipeline #
Total Pipeline #
Product A Pipeline $
Product B Pipeline $
Total Pipeline $
15,000
50,000
33.0%
10.0%
15
35
1500
250
1750
1700
275
1975
1900
300
2200
2100
325
2425
$
22,500 $
25,500 $
28,500 $
31,500
$
$
8,750 $
31,250 $
9,625 $
35,125 $
10,500 $
39,000 $
11,375
42,875 $
8350
148,250

9. Marketing plan in 5 questions
1. What/who are your targets?
2. What do they care about? What
outcome are they seeking?
3. Where do you find them?
4. What or who influences them?
5. How do they want to engage and
(eventually) buy?

10. Your customers

11. Put your marketing budget on a
diet
•
•
•
•
•
Combine PR and social media
Hire your customers
Use more content (yours and theirs)
Join and participate in communities
Build and launch remarkable products

12. Management essentials
•
•
•
•
•
•
Roles & responsibilities
Triage
Scorecards
Meeting rhythm
Transparency and trust
Track to the close

13. What do customers care about?

14. The buying progression
Problem/
Pain
Solution
Objective/
Outcome

15. 5 tips for better customer-centric
sales
1. Use “you” instead of “I”
2. Treat the first sales call like an interview
3. Align yourself with existing customer
priorities
4. Respect their time
5. Let your current customer sell for you

16. Custom messages by role
Audience
Drivers
Pain Points
Value Propositions(bullet points)
Key Messages
Drivers
Pain Points
Value Propositions(bullet points)
Key Messages
Vertical #1
CEO
IT/CIO
CFO
CMO
Audience
Vertical #2
CEO

17. Three content questions
• What do I want people to see, hear and/or
learn?
• What do I want people to think?
• What do I want people to do?

18. Social media for sales
•
•
•
•
Target individuals and keywords
Watch for early-stage buying signals
Participate as a peer
Teach sales & customer service reps to
interact directly
• Use tools to manage, assign, etc.

19. Top sales reps – social tips
1. Get new introductions from existing network
2. Get new introductions from others in their
organization
3. Watch for buying signals across the social Web
4. Target both individuals and keywords
5. Build deeper, early relationships with new
prospects
6. Directly share information, become an expert,
generate a following

20. Finding more sales on LinkedIn
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Read the Daily Digest…daily
Join and participate in groups
Keep your profile up to date
Give skill endorsements
Ask for specific referrals and introductions
Create saved searches
Use LinkedIn Contacts
Use trigger event tools

21. Finding more sales on Twitter
•
•
•
•
•
Follow your prospects
Follow your partners
Curate customer-centric content
Listen for buying signals
Watch and use hashtags

22. Nine Social Selling Tools
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
HootSuite
Nearstream
TweetAdder
Dlvr.it
Timely.is
UnTweeps
TextExpander or ActiveWords
Email Alerts
Morning Coffee

23. Top Social Selling Tools

24. Daily Do Lists
• Objective: Engage with social selling best
practices daily
• Cost: Free
• How It Works:
– Schedule a daily meeting with yourself at 7:30
am (or whenever you start your work day)
– Work through the list
@heinzmarketing

25. Matt’s Daily Do List
1. Schedule (yesterday & today)
2. Touch Base (birthdays, Likes)
3. Endorsements (skills, Kred, Klout,
Connect.me, MeritShare)
4. Spam folder
5. Network (Twitter adds, G+ Circles)
6. Engage (Comments, LinkedIn Groups)
7. Prospecting
@heinzmarketing

26. Three types of content
1.Proactive
2.Reactive
3.Participatory

27. Planning content
Week 1
Theme 1
Theme 2
Theme 3
Theme 4
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4

28. Editorial calendar example
Market Leader
Q2 2010 Editorial Calendar
Q2
May
Week of May 3
Week of May 10
Spring Season Heats Up
Corporate Theme
Content Theme
Company News (PR)
Agent productivity tools - Creating a customerwhat's recommended,
centric brokerage (blog)
what's working (blog, AR)
12 ways to motivate,
excite and retain your
agents (blog)
What productivity tools are
your agents using? Any
that have been adopted
across the brokerage?
How many conferences to
do you attend each year?
Which are your favorites
and why?
What are your best
practices for motivating,
exciting and retaining your
agents?
Leading RE free trial
Industry Calendar
Broker Ops (Bob)
Training & Education
Broker LinkedIn Group Questions
Leadership (Ian)
Agents & Teams (Scott) How to share best
practices across your
team (blog, AR)
What does customercentric mean at your
brokerage? What are
your best practices around
this?
The best customer service Early listing season
advice I ever received
observations (blog)
(blog)
Team collaboration best
practices (blog, AR)
Leadership Commentary
Market Leader Voices
Five Ways to be a Market Leader
(Video)
Ian's Leadership Videos
What is your brokerage
doing with social media?
Can you measure specific
new business from these
investments?
Why listings matter even
in a buyers market (blog)
How has business been
since the home-buyer
credit expired? What new
promotions have you
instituted to replace it?
What is your brokerage
doing to encourage and
facilitate teamwork and
resource sharing?
Combining resources
across a team to increase
marketing impact (blog,
AR)
Seller marketing tips from
real estate veterans (blog,
AR)
How to increase your
Twitter followers (blog,
AR)
Guest Posts: Broker Web site success stories (pull
from Exit customers)
5 ways to improve your
search results (Thad)
Best practices for listing
presentations (blog, AR)
Why your Web domain is
How to be immediately
so important (and why it's
responsive to your Web
not) (blog, AR)
leads (blog, AR)
Guest Posts: Best customer service you ever gave or received
5 ways to build a business
within a business (Ian)
Five Characteristics of a
Successful Real Estate
Business
5 ways to instantly
improve your customer
service (Scott)
How much training do you
provide your agents?
What topics do you focus
on?
Attracting & recruiting
agents (blog)
How to be more efficient
when you don't always
share the same
workspace (blog, AR)
Sales & Marketing Advice (anon) Five seller appeasement
strategies that won't break
the bank (blog, AR)
Search & Web Tips (Thad)
June
Week of June 14
Week of June 21
Week of June 28
Are you growing your market share?
Week of May 24
Week of May 31
Week of June
New Vision for Real Estate Industry
Bringing it all together to grow your business
Gathering of Eagles
200th MLS
Keynote Recap
Mid-year NAR
Top 10 reasons why
brokers should care about
social media (blog, AR)
Fiji Release
Week of May 17
TBD
Building a CustomerCentric Brokerage
TBD
How to help local
Using social media to
buyers/sellers find your
market your listings (blog,
Web site (blog, AR)
AR)
Guest Posts: Tips and Tricks to Establish Yourself as the Market Leader
TBD
Why Lead Management
Matters (and why it's often
ignored)
TBD
TBD
Knowing when technology
is important, and when it's
not

29. Five common content
marketing mistakes
1. Not having a plan up front
2. Writing for the company instead of the
customer
3. Not encouraging and participating in twoway communication
4. Not promoting, aggregating and curating
great content from others
5. Only producing written content

30. Repurposing

31. How to create more content
•
•
•
•
•
Write more ideas down
Keep a single, ongoing list of those ideas
Ideas, then outlines, then drafts
Write ahead of time
Use guest contributors

32. 10 sources of content inspiration
1. Customer questions
2. Stuff you read
3. People you disagree with
4. Your customer-facing teams
5. Trade press
6. Conferences, panels & Webinars
7. Twitter hashtags
8. LinkedIn Answers
9. The news
10. Things you see that are dumb

33. Keys to effective pipeline execution
•
•
•
•
Use a lead management system
Clearly define lead & opportunity stages
Focus on great content
Make it easy for prospects to self-select
and move forward

34. Leads & Opportunities

35. Six reasons why your sales
(might) suck
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Are you selling to the right buyer?
Are you selling benefits or features?
Do you sound desperate?
Do your sales & marketing teams agree?
Do your customers want what you’re
selling?
6. What are they saying behind your back?

36. When prospects go dark…
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Try a different channel
Try a different contact
Share something unrelated
Try a different angle
Engage their influencers
Move on

37. Don’t forget…
matt@heinzmarketing.com

38. Questions?