Balancing Sales and Marketing in an Early Stage Technology Company

Rivalry is an early stage technology company. We have one person running sales and marketing (me) and another building the product. Over the last 5 months we’ve had to balance our efforts with marketing, sales, and building the product. Below is our story of what we’ve done and what’s ahead.

Marketing and Selling without a Product – Marketing something not yet created is tough. Selling it is almost impossible. Rivalry’s doors opened in January with the expectation to build an MVP as soon as possible.

The First 4 Months Without a Full Time Developer – the first 4 months of Rivalry included finding the top talent. That process took four months. In Atlanta, there are 4 job openings for every 1 developer. Finding great talent is hard.

Our target market is small to medium-sized businesses. This is great; many of our prospective companies find their products via the internet. In pre-product stage, what do you do? The simple answer: write. Write blog posts, guides, white papers, best practices, and write until your heart is content. Create as much evergreen content as possible.

The first stage of your content marketing should prioritize SEO much higher than any other time in the company. Search Engine Optimization needs time and when a startup is pre-product, now is the time to invest in the future of marketing. Target keywords your prospects will not only type into Google tomorrow, but 5 years from now. If done right, a well-worded blog post is the gift that keeps giving by providing a constant stream of leads. Learn more about the convergence of SEO, social, and how product development fits in to the mix.

Customer Develop While Writing – now is the time to start planting the seeds with your first customers. There’s no need to sell at this point because nothing substantial is available to show prospects. Building relationships with future customers is a top priority.

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3 Ways Not To Feel Like The Dude in The Big Lebowski…When Selling

It’s a scene played across hundreds of sales organizations each day. The sales guy walks over to the marketing department, buddying up with one of the marketers looking for “more leads.” The marketer looks at the sales guy, makes a joke, and then laughs at him. It goes down just like it did in The Big Lebowski for the Dude when asking a cop if they had any more leads for his case.

Put the Power in Your Own Hands

You already know how to prospect in sales like a detective, now it requires you to take action. Start small. Leads are out there…yes hundreds of them and being at the whim of the marketing department just won’t fly. The last thing you want to be is the helpless victim like The Dude.

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Rivalry: Atlanta’s Best Coffee Shops By Area

Being in technology, it’s no surprise we like coffee and coffee shops. In Atlanta there are many great coffee shops, it’s tough to just pick one. The hold-up with picking one coffee shop in Atlanta is that we’re a city with what seems like 8 different towns; comparing a coffee shop in Buckhead to another in Old Fourth Ward doesn’t work. So we’ve broken this quarter’s Rivalry into geographical locations : Buckhead, Westside, and O4W/Virginia Highland.

Best Coffee Shop in Buckhead: The Ritz-Carlton vs. Caribou+Starbucks

The Ritz Carlton – It may sound abusrd, but the The Ritz -Carlton Buckhead, slick has some of the best coffee and tea in the city: it’s cheap and…pause, yes the paper is free. New York Times, AJC, and Wall Street Journal lay in racks for any paying customer. DON’T TELL ANYONE. The biggest issue for the me at the Ritz is looking the part. Our normal work attire consists of tee-shirt’s and jeans. Whenever I make it a morning at the Ritz I’ll try to throw on a jacket or button up to attempt to the look the part for a moment or two. Take our insight on this, stop by the Ritz for a 15 minute coffee break, catch up on world news, and valet your car while doing it (only 2 dollars). The total trip will cost you less than the paper you’ll walk out of there with.

8+ Caribou & Starbucks - Yes, it is ridiculous the amount of Starbucks and Caribou Coffees in the Buckhead area. The one redeeming quality each one has is the amount of activity going on…if energy is your thing. You’ll never feel like Atlanta is placid when hanging around one of these shops. Whether it’s the carpool mom with the line of kids or the investment banker closing a deal on the phone, the energy is real and infectious. Getting caught up in the hustle and bustle will likely motivate you do whatever you’re doing, faster. These coffee shops are littered all over this part of town from Lenox Mall to the corner of West Paces Ferry; spend a few hours in one of these shops and let it ride. As for the coffee..well you likely already know how it is.

On the Come Up: Octane @ Atlanta Tech Village - Be on the look out for the Octane Coffee in the works at the Atlant Tech Village. The first independent coffee shop in the heart of Buckhead is about to pop up in the most unexpected of places.

Best Coffee Shop in WestSide/Midtown: Octane Coffee (Westside) vs. The Warhorse

Octane Coffee – Westside

Octane Coffee (Westside) – The original Octane Coffee is a significant staple in this town. It seems more artwork has been showcased on those walls than at the HIGH sometimes. Back in 08′, Octane was one of the first few places where TweetUps were held and co-working with friends just seems to happen here. The mix of artists, students, business folks, and technologists make it a place where the diversity keeps you guessing of one another’s story. The coffee is some of the best in the city. Hands down. Time seems to escape and focusing on the task at hand becomes much easier.

The Warhorse Coffee Joint

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2 Ways HubSpot is Changing Sales Forever

Every time HubSpot opens the door to their magical factory of marketing and sales alignment, we peek our heads inside and take notes. Last week, sales oracle and HubSpot VP of Sales, Mark Roberge (pictured) shared the innovative sales processes they’re using at HubSpot. They’re changing sales forever in two ways.

Two Ways HubSpot is Changing Sales Forever

1. Marketing Is Now Accountable…Say What!?!

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3 “Must Knows” When Deciding Sales Leadership

Sales leadership is essential to a growing sales organization. It takes discipline, gut, and a whole lot of work. At Rivalry, we’ve come across all sizes of sales team. Some are scaling 1 salesperson a year others are hiring 4 salespeople a month. It’s very tough to scale and build a strong sales team. The first step is getting the right sales leadership in the company.

Know the Type of Sales Leadership You Want to Bring On

The job of the CEO is to find which style of sales leadership fits best with the company. This can be tough but it always goes back to the culture of the company. Sales author, Steve Martin (not the comedian) wrote of 5 different types of management styles from a VP of Sales.

• Mentor – this style is lead with charm and panache. Sales results come in two ways: exceeding goals and cultivating an environment where the entire team can succeed. Consultative selling is this manager’s preferential sales strategy and are normally fairly hands off.
• Expressive managers – this style comes from the manager who can put anyone at ease. Monotonous tasks will bore this manager and their inclination and drive to be in the field will be too great to hold back.
• Sergeants – loyalty is their biggest characteristic…so much so they often times put their loyalty for the team over the loyalty to the company. Priority always rests on the “troops.”
• Overconfident manager – this style is lead with bravado almost to a fault. The team consists of mentally strong “gladiators,” who’s discipline is unmatched.
• Micromanagers – very organized and responsible down to the fine grain. Sales members of their team will carry out their instructions to a tee.

Source: Harvard Business Review

Know When To Bring On The Perfect Type of Sales Leadership 

There is the perfect type of VP of Sales for every stage of your company. Jason Lemkin enumerates each type of VP required for the different company stages.

• The Evangelist (Revenue 0-$1,000,000) – This person is smart and very customer centric; they can think creatively and cross functionally. They’ll talk the ear off of any prospect with eloquence and conviction. The problem with the Evangelist: He or she has never scaled a sales team before. The best step to take is too look for these skills in your first sales rep hires.
• Mr. Make-It-Repeatable (Revenue $1,000,000 – $10,000,000) – Post initial traction, this is the person. This phase of the business, you have some customers but now need to put some process behind the organization. This is your person. They’ve done it before and have the experience.
• Ms. Go Big (Revenue $10,000,000-$40,000,000) – the VP of sales coming into a company with $10-$20mm in ARR is going to focus on the process evenmore: hire the right people, work on SDR program, get field sales churning, and dominate out-bound. Coordinating the entire revenue generation model with the VP of Marketing is key here as well.
• Mr. Dashboards (Revenue 40,000,000+) – this person has likely been at a big cos for awhile. This guy has the look, the golf game, and the board will love him. At this level, he’s meeting with managers and figuring out strategic ways to move the company forward. This VP of Sales should definitely be the last one you hire one you’re on the path of total industry domination.

Source: Sasstr

Know How to Enhance the Culture of You Company

This is the final and most important piece. Regardless of your style or the company stage, if the culture you create isn’t one where the best sales reps in the world want to work, then the talent war is already being lost to a smarter competitor. We’ve already explored the best types of sales reps for a sales organization but how does a company create a corporate culture to attract these reps? We have two ways:

• Inspire, motivate, and build confidence in your team – there are many ways to do this, but the best one we’ve found is through coaching. Mark Roberge of HubSpot wrote a great piece on sales coaching worth reading. Bottom line: schedule time to coach your reps and turn their weaknesses into strengths.
• The best sales reps are competitors. Cultivating a culture of friendly competition among your sales team will do wonders for the performance and culture of your company. LevelEleven has a great blog on ways to do this.

Company culture is highly indicative of the leadership skills and characteristics of the organization. The best companies will constantly seek out ways to improve their culture by surveying employees and exerting immense amounts of creativity into the company culture.

These are three “must knows” when deciding on sales leadership.