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What’s more important: product or sales?

Version One Ventures

It’s the age-old debate among start-up circles: which is more important to the success of a start-up: the strength of the sales/distribution strategy or the quality of the product? To be successful, a stand-alone company needs a top-notch product and a clever distribution/sales strategy. Today, it’s a different story.

Sales 144
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My Life as a CEO (and VC): Chief Psychologist

Both Sides of the Table

How can I hit my quota selling to Deutsc he Bahn – their sales cycles are so slow! But this isn’t restricted to distributed teams, multi-country environments or even large companies. It doesn’t seem fair. I don’t understand why she gets all of the best accounts. We faced it when we were small.

Ireland 319
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How Pertino is reinventing the future of business networking

Lightspeed Venture Partners

Instead of selling to the CIO (which could have long, costly sales-cycles), Pertino has focused on marketing and selling their services directly to the end-user. Given their core expertise in networking, we believed that they were one of the few teams in the world that could deliver on this promise.

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Top Hat Raises $22.5M Series C in a Tough Vertical: What Can We Learn from their Success

Version One Ventures

And selling to institutions requires a long sales cycle. They took an innovative approach to distribution. Top Hat adopted a bottoms-up approach to distribution, as covered in the Globe and Mail article: Sales took off after Top Hat ignored advice and flipped its sales strategy.

Vertical 131
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Your B2B Demand Generation Funnel: How to Create One and Mistakes to Avoid

ConversionXL

In this article, you’ll learn how to build a demand generation funnel that fuels the pipeline, shortens the sale cycle, and generates revenue. Stage 5: Maximize your content’s ROI with well-oiled distribution. Content distribution can be difficult. Mistakes to avoid with your content distribution strategy.

Demand 124
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A new field guide for entrepreneurs of all stripes

Startup Lessons Learned

Differences in how people are reached, their expectations of the buying process, how their trust is earned, the price point they’ll accept, what distribution methods are most efficient, the messaging that attracts them -- all these factors (and more) may represent different sub-segments.

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Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition | For Entrepreneurs

www.forentrepreneurs.com

For example: Create demo videos that answer every likely sales question. List the common sales objections that come up in the sales cycle, and provide answers to these on the web site. SolidWorks 2: The best VAR management program in the world? Consider every possible way to minimize this.