Re:Why Startups Need to Focus on Sales, Not Marketing
by ghiculescu on Tuesday June 03, 2014 @07:30PM
(#7843300)
This sounds like another cop out. If you really have a good product, get a list of customers who'd benefit from it, then start calling. You'll learn a lot about how good your product actually is.
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Re:Why Startups Need to Focus on Sales, Not Marketing
by rtx on Tuesday June 03, 2014 @08:04PM
(#7843396)
You don't exactly get such lists. We don't have a filter for customers with needs. So the best option is do an manual filtering. This can save valuable time for the sales time.
Re:Why Startups Need to Focus on Sales, Not Marketing
by ghiculescu on Tuesday June 03, 2014 @08:33PM
(#7843470)
Bollocks. If you can't - at least in broad terms - describe the kind of business/consumer that would benefit from your product, then are you really ready to start selling? And if you can describe them - then surely you can get a rough idea of where they hang out, who they are, etc.
Otherwise you are just throwing darts blindly and hoping they hit.
Re:Why Startups Need to Focus on Sales, Not Marketing
by grayclhn on Tuesday June 03, 2014 @09:32PM
(#7843600)
>You don't exactly get such lists.
A lot of people would argue that this is a key part of understanding your market. If you don't have a such a list, it probably makes sense to hustle, cold-call, talk to people you know closer to the industry, etc (i.e., exactly the same steps people are describing as "sales") to get one.
Re:Why Startups Need to Focus on Sales, Not Marketing
by vidarh on Wednesday June 04, 2014 @05:22AM
(#7844702)
The problem is an outsourced lead gen company will not understand what signifies a good lead if you don't, and they will call people and pick up on the wrong things.
Using outsourced lead gen. is great if you can describe exactly how their staff can identify what makes a good lead, and can follow them up closely to give feedback about which leads were good and which weren't, and why. But unless you've done the whole process yourself first, you're unlikely to know exactly how to best instruct them.