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Startup Selling: Talking Sales with Scott Sambucci

Over the past twenty years, I’ve led three Silicon Valley startups to their first customers and revenue, and sold everything from financial data, enterprise software, and vaporware to cabinet doors, amusement park daily programs, and “would you like fries with that…?” My customers have included the largest financial institutions in the world, top US Universities, cabinet door makers and people that eat at Applebees and go to amusement parks... I’ve learned a lot, and made a few, ahem, well… a lot, of mistakes. Here in The Sales Podcast with Scott Sambucci, I share the lessons learned from my past two decades of selling. In each episode, I discuss a specific topic in selling and sales strategy like how to find new prospective customers, how to manage leads, how to run an effective sales meeting, uncovering customer needs, and developing pricing strategies. Episodes are a mix of guest interviews, observations from the field, and sales techniques that I’m using every single day. And people that care about such things, I’ve written two books, been a TEDx Speaker, been featured on CNBC, The Financial Times and NPR. Oh… I’m also a husband, a dad, and a three-time Ironman triathlete. Build your sales process so that you can have the company you imagine. The Sales Podcast with Scott Sambucci will help you get there.
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Startup Selling: Talking Sales with Scott Sambucci
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Now displaying: February, 2016
Feb 16, 2016

SalesCast 18 – Revenue Acquisition Portfolio

This SalesCast is brought to you by, well, SalesQualia. Check out the Startup Selling Program, a 90-day program focused on finding customers, growing revenue and building your sales process.

In this special, On the Road with Scott Sambucci episode of the Startup Selling podcast, Scott discusses the idea of Revenue Acquisition Portfolios; a way of looking at the amount of time (investment) you place into different lead funnels versus the return on that investment (sales). Key areas covered:

  • The importance of analyzing how much time you are investing in different sales funnels (cold calling, inbound leads, webinars, referrals, conferences, etc.) and what type of return you are seeing from each.
  • Discovering the risk versus reward of your different investments (time spent on different lead gens) based on the returns you are actually seeing versus what you think you should be doing.
  • Why focusing your time on one lead gen is just as bad as focusing on too many.
  • Scott presents a case study for a former startup he worked at to illustrate the idea in the real world.

Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes!

We hope you enjoy the podcast and would greatly appreciate feedback! Any suggestions on future topics you would like to hear covered and/or podcast guests you’d like to hear would be great! Enjoy!

Feb 2, 2016

This SalesCast is brought to you by, well, SalesQualia. Check out the Startup Selling Program, a 90-day program focused on finding customers, growing revenue and building your sales process.


In this episode, Scott speaks with special guest Melanie Wong from Box.com about her experience transitioning from being a lawyer into becoming a top prospector for big customers at Box.com. Key areas covered are:

  • Examples of cold calls that turned into big clients by knowing how to find project managers and project engineers.
  • The pitch to start off on a cold call, some patterns to use when cold calling, and some early signals that a deal is going south.
  • What constitutes a hard question to know if prospect is serious about your product and strategies to find additional product champions when yours isn’t pulling the deal through.

Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes!

We hope you enjoy the podcast and would greatly appreciate feedback! Any suggestions on future topics you would like to hear covered and/or podcast guests you’d like to hear would be great! Enjoy!

Podcast Notes

02:15 – What Melanie is working on.

04:53 – Law is cool and fun.

06:00 – What was most frustrating making a conversion to get into sales.

09:05 – An example where a cold call, has turned a client into a mega client.

11:30 – How to find these project engineers.

15:00 – The pitch to start off on a cold call.

16:50 – What is the pattern to use.

24:10 – How to start the email, “I’d love to introduce you to our executive team.”

27:17 – The job of an SDR, Sales Development Rep.

28:24 – In that cadence of call, call, email, email, how to craft that out in a way that is effective.

31:21 – What are the early signals that a deal is going south?

34:41 – What constitutes a hard question to know they want to get into this now.

36:44 – The strategy to navigate through trying to find multiple people.

Resources mentioned or related to this podcast

  • DiscoverOrg: Sales and Marketing Intelligence Solutions.
  • Data.com Instant access to millions of top quality company profiles and business contacts and emails all in one place.
  • LinkedIn: World's Largest Professional Network.
  • Yesware: Prescriptive tools that help sales teams sell smarter.
  • The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help Hardcover - by Amanda Palmer.
  • The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are Paperback - by Brené Brown
Feb 2, 2016

This SalesCast is brought to you by, well, SalesQualia. Check out the Startup Selling Program, a 90-day program focused on finding customers, growing revenue and building your sales process.

In this episode, Scott and Robert discuss the 10-Day Sales Call Challenge, a short, focused project to help build familiarity towards the sales process and understanding how to develop metrics for success. Key areas we cover are:

  • What is a 10 Day Sales Call Challenge, and how to be ready to do the challenge. 
  • The things to do to keep up with 10 calls a day, and creating familiarity towards a sales opportunity.
  • How to make that first contact with a prospect and suggestions to find worthwhile channels.
  • How to create metrics of success, the biggest piece of learning Scott has made and things to really stress on.

Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes!

We hope you enjoy the podcast and would greatly appreciate feedback! Any suggestions on future topics you would like to hear covered and/or podcast guests you’d like to hear would be great! Enjoy!

Podcast Notes

02:00 – What is the 10 Day Sales Call Challenge?

03:30 – How to be ready and able to do the 10-day challenge.

08:10 – What are you doing to keep that pipeline filled or to keep up with 10 calls a day.

11:55 – How to make that first contact with a prospect to go into the whole 10 calls.

17:05 – Try and create familiarity towards a sales opportunity 

21:00 – How much better of a response you have in an InMail message versus just doing straight cold calling.

24:05 – What are some other you know avenues, some other portals you would use to try and yourself out there, try and find some more of these prospects for your 10 days sales calls challenge.

28:40 – Suggestions to finding good and worthwhile channels, and how to create metrics of success.

33:05 – What is the biggest piece of learning that you have made so far? 

36:10 – Things to really stress on.

Resources mentioned or related to this podcast

  • LinkedIn, World's Largest Professional Network
  • Quora, The best answer to any question.
  • Twitter, An online social networking service.
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