​​The Triangle SaaS Sales Grind just finished it's "Networking and Hot Sales Topic" event. A great socializing/networking/dining meetup for solid 1-on-1 connections and sales conversations plus round table educational session. A big thanks to Pendo for providing the venue, pizza, beer, and rooftop view. They also threw in a beautiful sunset! A big special thanks to Larry Long Jr for moderating the sales educational portion of the evening.
Here are some top points made in the sales discussion that can be helpful for any sales professional:

• Definition of sales: "Generating Revenue" "Winning influence to achieve a desired result" "Match Making, understanding what is needed and then winning acceptance for your offered solution to address that need. Bring the need and solution together. "Transferring energy"
• Remember in sales it's the little things that matter. Be good at the fundamentals. Blocking and tackling. Look for excellence in the small things and the big things will take care of themselves
• Learn how to build up energy like runs in the morning or quiet time so you have the positive energy tank throughout the day to deliver passion and get through the "no" objections on the job with full steam ahead
• Remember to listen to fully understand. Don't listen to respond. Open up two ears for widest understanding of the message being delivered
• As a sales professional always be open to learning and growing. "The greatest athletes are coach-able". Be open to receiving coaching as a sales pro!
• "Inspect what you expect"
• Remember selling is winning the left side of the brain logic, but closes happen when left logic side agrees with the right side of the creative emotion brain. When the right side of the brain jumps on board after left side checks off logic list then buying occurs. Sell to both sides of the brain.
• Selling all starts with authenticity which builds trust which leads to more info sharing making it easier to sell. Then deliver a great product that address the pain points to give great results. The value will be seen and recognized resulting in customer for life.
• To sell successfully: Be passionate. Know thy product. Know thy industry. And most of all, Know thy client needs!
• Difference between "Contacts" and "Contracts" is one letter "R". R= Relationships. Build them!

Thanks again to Pendo for hosting and Larry Long Jr for moderation. Kudos to Melissa Crosby and Will Barfield for supporting great event too. Go Tech In RTP!

Grant Kitching from Citrix who helped lead Citrix’s growth from $8M to over $115M in approximately 4 years led a talk on "Best Practices for Scaling your Sales Organization."A great discussion at HQ Capital Club in Raleigh.
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A special thanks to Vince Beese from Triangle Revenue Exchange (TRE) forum for supporting this talk per the mission of the organization to focus on cross functional areas of revenue generation including direct sales, enterprise sales, business development, client retention & growth, channel sales, reselling, demand generation, and inside sales etc.
Here are some key talking points from the discussion:

• Success is not linear. Many ups, downs, and wiggles along the growth path. The key is to keep at it and focus. Keep moving toward your good noble purpose and things will happen.
• Understand not here to just sell a product or service. Here to do big things and make a big difference. Work your business and towards a higher calling like making a difference in humanity and changing business for the better.
• Two books recommended for the various phases of selling in different growth points of company. From $10-$50M read "Spin Selling". For $50-$100M read the "Challenger Sale".
• Don't let good stand in the way of great. No BS!
• Have clear purpose and values. Do the right things and know when you're doing the right actions.
• Know your product market fit, research and identify your use case, then once your bulls-eye winning recipe is identified rinse and repeat. Scale up. First with sales then marketing.
• Define your GTM motion. Vertical or GEO or blend. Selling as expert in a vertical gives you a competitive advantage.
• Define your team's purpose and value. Work off them. "Culture Trumps Strategy"
• When hiring good sales people look for those who show they have skills in empathy and been through some bumps in the road for the grit, tenacity, and persistence needed to succeed.
• Your opinion on a "valuable" is irrelevant. Get a data scientist. Proof is in the numbers. Numbers never lie. Let the data speak for itself.
• "Easy Choices, Hard Life", "Hard Choices, Easy Life".
• Focus on retention of your customers. One churned customer is 7x more expensive then getting a new customer.
• At the $50M -$100M read book, "E-Myth" Revisited
• Life is to short to not do great things. Be great!

Lastly, on everyone of the slides shared per things to focus on in different growth phases of the business from up to $1M, $2M to $10M, $10M-$50M, and $100M+ was the importance of "Having Fun" along the way. Make sure with all the hard work that you "Have Fun" to be a great place to work and have an environment that fosters good teamwork, sense of home, and place where accomplishments are celebrated and the team helps cheer each other on!

​Thanks to the Triangle REVenue Exchange event we had the opportunity to learn from the Chief Revenue Officer of ChannelAdvisor, Paul Forte. Paul shared his "Top Sales Commandments" about how to lay the foundation for sales excellence. A wonderful event graciously hosted at the ChannelAdvisor HQ in Morrisville, NC.
Many great wisdom points were shared on sales success, but here were top three points I noted to help give you a taste!

1. With your sales endeavors remember the "Stockdale Paradox". This perspective is comes from Admiral John Stockdale, VP for Ross Perot, per his prisoner of war experience and wisdom gained. Two characteristics of the "Stockdale Paradox" is:

• Face the brutal facts about your current reality. Don't try to excuse anything or rationalize anything away. Face the facts and deal with the truth head on.
• Have faith you will prevail in the end. Recognize any challenge as defining moment of opportunity to emerge bigger, better, and stronger.

When running your business and conducting sales be brutally honest with your situation and deal with the hard cold facts to address the reality of your situation. Have faith with the right efforts, product, and process you will prevail. Then focus on the execution.
2. The most important two attributes of a successful sales professional is like-ability and trust. At the end of the day, people ultimately buy from people they like and trust. Part of the sales craft is simply being a good friend and making good friends.
3. When Paul was asked to distill his most successful sales attributes in one acronym it was FLARE!

• F= Focus on the Fundamentals of good sales process. Know your craft, know how to handle objections, how to message, and know how to conduct yourself in meetings. Know the blocking and tackling of sales well.
• L=Listen. Listen more to your customers. Talk less. The old sales adage goes, "You can't listen your way out of a sale, but you can sure talk your way out of many sales". Ask open ended questions. Listen!
• A= Activity. Make more calls. Reach out more. Put in the action that leads to more sales. Fill your pipe line.
• R= Relationships. Be mindful of building relationships. Be like-able. Be trustworthy.
• E= Effort. Sales is all about hard work. Grind it out. Put in the time!

Some other great sales tips were:

• Get comfortable outside your comfort zone
• Selling is one thing, selling on time is another
• Messaging – its not WHAT you say, but HOW you say it

Overall an epic sales training event. Thank you Vince Beese and Triangle Revenue Exchange for putting on a great networking and educational evening. Big thanks to Paul Forte for world class teaching! Look forward to the next event!
About Triangle REVenue Exchange(TRE): TRE is a forum for revenue generating leaders who are responsible for driving growth at their organizations. The mission of TRE is to empower learning, sharing and mentoring for the revenue generating community. 

This evening Startup Grind Triangle held a fireside chat with Chris Heivly, serial entrepreneur (MapQuest co-founder) and early-stage investor with company-building experience from $0 to $25M. He is a frequent blogger - www.heivly.com, and contributing writer for INC.com and speaker about startups, corporate innovation, and entrepreneurial community development. In addition, he is author of the book, "How To Build A Fort".
The talk tonight focused on what it takes to build a startup in the Triangle along with how to leverage your community to gain best chance at success. Enclosed is recap of top wisdom points shared:

• MapQuest founded in Lancaster, PA by people who just loved maps and were computer tech loving geeks. Followed technology and pivoted along the way. First started as map solutions for AAA print ups, then CD-Rom, and then MapQuest.com internet. Took years of work, change, and passion fueled it all.
• Biggest challenge is customer. Figuring out who the customer is and selling. Win that and your past half way there.
• Remember the first mover advantage. Be the first big fish and play in a fast growing pond.
• "Get out of the damn office". No business plan survives first contact with the customer. Talk with everyone about your idea to polish your communication, strategy, and plan. Talk with 35-50 well informed people during discovery phase to solidify idea and business opportunity. Constantly adjust and fine tune your idea and business.
• Don't get your feelings hurt if someone says your "baby is ugly". Be super open minded to all suggestions and adjust. Always be seeking improvement.
• Always seek vast advice and gain as many view points as you can for broadest perspective to chart your best path. There are 1 beer ideas and then there are 3 beer ideas. Think big.
• When seeking advice ask, "Have you seen this situation before and dealt with it?" If the answer is no then weigh that advice less then if answer is yes. Be discerning.
• Do "meet and greets" with many people as fast as you can about idea and gather feedback to run with it. Like 30 coffees in 30 day pace!
• Building community comes down to 5 key important drivers: Culture, Density, Talent, Capital, and Institutional Support.
• Build a great network, find resources, and ask for help. Always seek and don't be shy.
• When do you know when to start your own company? Prepare mentally, physically, and financially. Be able to cover yourself for at least 12 months so you have time to get your company moving and get revenue going. Mentally be ready. Think through all the risks, opportunity, and process through everything needed. Run your ideas as side business until company is moving well and gain enough comfort to jump from your corporate job. Get traction going to have enough data to see opportunity exceeds risk to support your leap of faith. Prepare for your journey. It took Facebook almost 3 years to get any traction and expand out of the Harvard and education space.
• True value in company past discovery and validation is how easily and reasonably you can acquire customers.

Great wisdom shared and giving of time by Chris Heivly so kudos to his generous nature. Also big thanks to Mark Bavisotto, Director of Startup Grind Triangle, for organizing and hosting great event.

Tonight Startup-Grind Triangle hosted Marshall Brain who built HowStuffWorks into a multi-million acquisition to Discovery Education. Marshall founded HowStuffWorks in 1998 as a hobby and sold to Discovery Channel for $250 million in 2007. The talk this evening provided a great discussion on how Marshall went from idea at kitchen table to impressive exit. Plus, Marshall shared details on process called "Machine That Makes Money." 
Enclosed is recap of top insights shared:

• Idea for HowStuffWorks came after writing 8 books and his interest to publish content in real-time on chapter by chapter basis via blog so launched HowStuffWorks.com. Lesson is, things lead to other things, so just start doing and new ideas and outputs lead to new bigger opportunities.
• Enjoy the work you do, don't be afraid to try, and never give up. Just do it. HowStuffWorks started with posts for months with no one caring. No one cared about the posts for months. Then one day an article came out referencing his site and traffic grew. Then another writer referenced his blog and then things popped from there. All grew organically. HowStuffWorks took a year to get any traction and then things gained great steam. Try a hundred things to find that one thing that works!
• If you get the passion and muse to do something, then do it. Write it. Blog it. Work from joy. Perhaps no one cares. And no one may care for a long time, but at some point things pop. The "down stream" is beautiful as things happen unexpectedly over time. Opportunities come from work and effort. You will be surprised what can come your way after your sincere best efforts. Serendipity is beautiful. Have the good attitude to "give it a go".
• HowStuffWorks started as one man band. Just guy at kitchen table posting articles because it was fun. No one cared about the posts for over a year and then a blogger wrote about his website. Then someone from New York Times referenced that blogger link to HowStuffWorks. Then another writer referenced it so things built over time slowly and organically. Then things opened up with opportunity to win "Coolest Website" at big conference. He won the whole show and then investors started pouring in. From there it grew big! He even got called to be on "Oprah" because they found his name and number on his website and heard about his blog!
• Start with just growing your idea, product, and service one by one. Then look into angel investing and that can lead to winning attention and raising money from other VCs. Good to start small. Build momentum slowly but surely. Make yourself more attractive and gain leverage making it easier for other other opportunities.
• Find a guy who can "sell ice to eskimo" and then hire that guy. They hired a great sales guy who pitched the company to Discovery Communications and got it sold for $250M because of all the site traffic, impressions, users, ad revenue, and most importantly because they had a great guy who could sell the value of the company.
• Be frugal. Be conservative. Get a black belt in frugality. Don't just buy at Costco, buy the stuff on sale at Costco.
• Do things you love. Enjoy the work and just do it. Then if people care it's great, but if not, it's ok because the work is fun to you. Don't give up and be persistent as things take time to build. Things are like nature, a bamboo shoot takes years to sprout, but when it grows it explodes high quickly, but takes years just to grow a few inches before it shoots up many feet in months.
• Have thick skin. Don't get bothered if people ignore you or say no. It happens so expect it. Just keep pushing, keep trying, and enjoy the ride.
• Ask questions and be open minded to what people care about and you get great business ideas. Listen, be open minded, and make appointments to interview people about your idea, but talk around your idea without mentioning it by asking questions. Learn about peoples' pain points and discover what really matters to them so you can adapt your product idea. Interview potential customers who will show you themes in pain points that you can then address with the most robust product.
• Get your product out there to see if anyone cares. Just deliver the most viable product(MVP) and see how people react. Learn and then iterate. Just get moving. See if people engage and if market exists for your idea. Try to get to your first 100 customers asap, one product at a time. Prototype and release. Improve prototype and release.
• Biggest advice for any entrepreneur is just do something. Plan it out with discipline and with smart prep work yes, but at some point just get something in market to see if it resonates. Get off the couch and release your idea, product, or service to the world. Try it! If all works great. If not gaining traction, then try something else. Sell your prototypes. Watch serendipity happen.
• Know when to jump into your entrepreneur business fully when you feel most risk is gone, when your product idea revenue is able to replace your other job income, or when you're pushed out of other options. Follow your heart!
• See if you have AD resonance. Discover if your product advertisements resonates with people. Do people react to your ads and care enough to check out your product or service? Can you run an ad campaign and get people to react and buy your product cost effectively based on your ad cost and product sale price, margin etc. If yes, then you have the "money making machine".

Great event and special thanks to Mark Bavisotto from Startup Grind for leading event, Marshall Brain for wonderful talk, and HQ Raleigh for hosting event. Great beer from Lone Rider and food from Al's BBQ too. Looking forward to the next Startup Grind event this April 2018.