Sales Lessons For Start Ups
Session - 5

Review From First Webinar
Sales Lesson 1 - The start up companies should have
customer in mind, involve the customer while building
the process or application to test the proof of concept
Sales Lesson 2 - Try to collaborate i.e. find people who
can work along with you, not necessarily for you
Sales Lesson 3 - Focus on revenue stream which are
annuity based, revenue should come on regular basis
Sales Lesson 4 - Hire, share resources or make partner
with people/institutions who have sales experience &
understanding
Sales Lesson 5 - Use social media platform effectively
to do sales, share your ideas with decision makers &
to create your brand

Review From Our Last Webinar
• Create Proposition For Regular Revenue Stream
 Recurring revenue business model – is probably the most efficient and scalable business model out
there
 If you look at business models of startup unicorns over 50% of them use recurring revenue as their
primary business model
• Irregular revenue stream, creates uncertainty
 While the thought of recurring revenue can be very attractive for digital businesses who have
irregular income, it’s worth weighing up the pros and cons before rushing into a business model
• Pricing Mechanism - Strategies To Build Costs Through Revenue Stream
 The pricing mechanism selected has a significant impact on the revenues generated by the revenue
stream
• The Key To Success In Business? Taking Baby Steps
 Choose to take slow and steady baby steps and inch along, to make good progress
• Setting Effective Revenue Targets
 One of the reasons why companies miss their revenue targets is: not setting revenue targets at all or
effectively
Sales Lesson 3 – Focus on revenue stream which are annuity based, revenue should
come on regular basis

Our Today’s Webinar Will
Focus On
Sales Lesson – 4

Sales Lesson # 4
• Hire resources with right profile at right
cost, do not waste money on low cost
resources
• Founders to focus on the core
competency
• Initial sales most difficult & time
consuming
• Partner with people who have
understanding of start ups, value start ups
bring on the table & look for long term
relationships
• Wherever possible, outsource sales
Hire, share resources or make partner with people/institutions who
have sales experience & understanding

Do You Want To Grow Big? Share Resources
Everyone has a startup idea
A handful of those people actually follow through on their ideas
Out of the handful, an even smaller subset gets to launch their product.
Some of them pick up clients along the way
When they come to the point that they realize, “Hey, this could really be
something,” they will want to hire resources to grow their startup

Why Hiring Is Important For Your Start Up
Hire For Potential
 A successful startup will quickly outgrow everyone’s current skills and roles
 Look for high achievers.
Hire for attitude, train for skills
 Focus on the fundamentals: intelligence, personality, diligence
 Instead of testing for specific knowledge, check how a prospect reacts when
you ask them to do something they haven’t worked on before.
Hire deliberately
 Make the first 20 hires deliberately with the future in mind. Don’t hire people
just because they’re good in general and available.
 Your first few hires will set the tone for the future. Getting it right will make
something that’s intrinsically hard a lot easier.

Hiring is hard, but hiring for startups can be even harder. As a young company with
limited cash flow, hiring the wrong employee can potentially break your startup
Hire Resources With Right Profile
Build your
company with a
mission and vision.
Hire your fans
Consider hiring
remote
employees.
Be a great place to
work.
Hold onto your
existing talent.
Below you can find some suggestions on hiring the best startup employees.

Focus On Core Competency
Here are four fundamental steps growth-stage businesses must take:
1. Stay focused on what sells best
Many startups fail because they spread themselves too thin at the growth stage. They try to do
everything for any client or they try to expand into multiple new markets simultaneously. And many
times these strategies just do not work.
2. Then innovate and expand strategically
Entrepreneurs need to strategize and innovate into niches that will help the core business expand.
3. Let processes and products take center stage
As small businesses transition into the growth stage, they need to standardize business processes so
that great experiences can be consistently reproduced.
4. Build your brand
This requires superior product development, a strong focus on a client-centric sales funnel and
excellent customer service. These should be core tenets of every business plan.
In order to scale up and grow in a big way, business owners have to prioritize a growth to-do list.
Often, the talent and leadership that enable rapid expansion in a company’s early stages may
not be enough to keep fueling high growth and this causes businesses to stagnate

Start Up Marketing Trends in India
•Brand building as of a few years ago wasn’t really a part of the
financial plan for a seed fund start-up. There were marketing
costs, cost of acquisition and media spends, but brand building
and team housing for building that brand were narrow
Brand Building
•The strategy needed to acquire customers as soon as possible is
by and large flawed from the beginning. Market penetration
implies that the market is waiting for your corporation to enter
the mind-space of the consumers quickly
Market
Penetration
•We’ve witnessed a lot of start-ups try their hand at social media,
however we don’t see many going for community-building. Unlike
the larger brands, smaller start-ups need a passionate community
for their products and services.
Community
Building
• Brands aren’t so inclined to spend money on mass marketing strategies
anymore and are now more sophisticated to focus down on niche audiences,
as well as popular communities where their message can spread organically.
The focus on acquisition through ROI has faded a bit after understanding
that competition will drive the cost upwards in the long term.
ROI
Some of the trends in the space right now are quite interesting

Strategies To Choose Right business Partner
someone you
genuinely enjoy,
like, and trust.
someone who
shares your values
someone with a
complementary set
of skills and traits
someone who
gives and takes
someone who
wants to grow and
will support your
growth.
someone who can
share your vision
Someone willing to
engage in proactive
conflict
management
someone who is
prepared for the
end
Ideally, partners contribute diverse skills and talents to their business, providing
a sense of wholeness that no one partner could have achieved alone.
Many of today's iconic companies were founded by pairs. And investors prefer to
invest in teams.
Here is what you need to know to make choosing a partner a step towards
success.

Strategies for a partnership that starts strong and stays strong
Build Successful Business Partnership
-Start by creating a
shared Vision &
Mission
Make sure each
partner's needs and
expectations are
addressed
Identify and utilize
the strengths of each
partner.
Support the
partnership's
limitations
Set company and
individual goals.
Define job roles for
each partner,
including
accountability
Handle
disagreements,
disappointments and
frustrations early

Trends of Outsourcing Sales
• From startups to established businesses, outsourcing is now being embraced by
companies of all sizes as a tool that helps them gain a competitive advantage.
• As businesses continue to move to multiple platforms like cloud, social, and mobile,
outsourcing lets them adapt to rapidly changing business environments.
• Outsourcing these tasks can help your business build a modern sales and marketing
operation without the expense of additional hires or training.
• Working with an outside partner lets your company grab more market shares, expand
your sales reach, and realize your revenue goals much more quickly than if you performed
certain non-core functions in-house.
• Outsourced sales and marketing is an ideal solution for businesses looking to scale.
• The benefits outsourcing sales and marketing brings is an easy choice for companies
looking to build their sales pipeline while containing costs and increasing revenue
• Benefits
 Access to an experienced team that is up-to-date with the latest technologies and
techniques
 Ability to quickly ramp up or down during high and low volume periods
 Substantial savings by avoiding the cost of new hires

Next Upcoming Webinar
Section

Upcoming Webinar Sessions
By end of Sales Lessons Webinar Sessions, we will create
the following,
• A tribe of all Indian start ups with #indianstartups
wherein, start up firms list their problems and get
solutions to their problems through blogs
• Create project and sales campaign on Indian cuisine
focusing on one product line
My next Webinar session will cover the remaining sales
lessons 4 and 5

For any further queries, kindly reach me @
+91 8826313737 or email me @
munish@vsstechnology.com