Fail Forward Friday: Vol. 5 – “Go big or go home”

I find that while spending most of my time at home since mid March, like all of us, I reflect on my journey more often, “how did I get to this point in my career?”. The most valuable reflections are the ones which focus on the times I Failed and the lessons learned.

When I was part of my 1st internet start-up I learned a lot of very important lessons. This was very early in my career and I was still transitioning from a business to a technology career.

Being young and starting a business with very little money, all of the partners wore several hats. During the day I ran sales and marketing while at night I would put together web pages for the custom web sites sold to our customers. These we good days and fun times.

We had, through some passionate and creative work by members of the sales team, manged to land the NHL’s Florida Panthers Hockey Team as a client. Certainly a feather in our cap and one which opened up many other opportunities for our small start-up.

There are two specific opportunities, both of which I Failed to close, which I will share as they taught the same lesson.

Our 1st opportunity came when we were asked to bid on a web site design for another company owned by the team’s owner. Having built a relationship with one of their trusted advisors, I went into the meeting with a degree of confidence which far exceeded my experience.

After my 30 minute presentation on the site we were proposing to build and wowing the audience with our impressive list of clients, I moved in for the close.

Keep in mind that at the time I was in my mid 20’s and had 0 practical sales training, “All this is $15,000.00 for the web site and $99.00/mo. in hosting fees.”

That, as they say, was that. I was thanked very much for my time and assured that it was clear that I did not understand what the client was asking for.

Dazed and confused I headed back to work.

A few weeks later I reached out to my friend, the trusted advisor, to find out what happened. Over drinks he explained “Jeff, you killed in there. They loved everything you had to say, the way you solved for their concerns and how you showed them what was possible. You forgot one very important thing. You have to sell to your audience, you are selling value, a solution, something that your customer needs. But you have to sell it to them at their price, not your cost.”.

I was confused and asked for an explanation.

“You were talking to a person who can buy an NHL Hockey Team and owns several multi-million dollar companies. He can spend more than $15K on dinner with friends, offering to build a web site as the face of his flagship company for that money was a bit insulting. If you had asked me before the presentation, I would have told you to increase your price 10 Xs.”

Lesson learned, know who you are talking to and speak to their expectations. Got it.

A few months later we were asked to bid on the soon to be announced NHL.com, this was big. Every team which did not already have a site would have one created by the same company that build the NHL.com web site.

We competed against 20 or more other companies and in the end it came down to us and one other company, a global player in the technology/computing field for many years. Our final presentation to the NHL was an incredible experience. We had the advantage of using the Florida Panther’s site to showcase what we could do for the NHL as a whole. We talked about enabling the site for technology which, while not available at the time, was mere months to a year away from debuting. We were repeatedly asked, “Is that even possible?” and were able to bring up an example of a current client who was using something similar or reply, “it will be soon”. Fast forward to the end of our presentation and I move in for the close.

“All this and more can be your for as little as $250,000 for web site design and development and $2,499/mo. in hosting fees.”, I closed with a bit of an inner grin figuring I learned my lesson.

“Thank you for you proposal, we will be comparing considering both proposals. We will follow up if we have any questions.” was the response.

Two sleepless weeks later we received the only question they had, “We loved everything you had to offer and would like to move forward with you, however, the other proposal included a consideration of an advertising purchase agreement over the next five years, what can you do?”. A bit perplexed and a little caught off guard, I responded “We can build the web site described, for the price we quoted and in the time promised.”, crickets… “Ok, we will take that under consideration. We will have our final answer next week.” click – end of the call.

A week passed and needless to say, we did not get the contract. In the final call with the team from the NHL they expressed their regret at not being able to choose our proposal but the potential of a multi-year advertising contract was too much to pass up. I do not recall seeing one of our competitors ads on a Florida Panthers or any other NHL game televised game over the next few years but it did help me learn the lesson I should have learned the first time I FAILED; if you want to play big, you have to go big or go home.

#FailForwardFriday

Read previous Fail Forward Friday posts:

Vol. 1: - https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/fail-forward-friday-vol-1-jeff-burstein

Vol. 2 – Part 1: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/fail-forward-friday-vol-2-part-1-jeff-burstein

Vol. 2 – Part 2: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/fail-forward-friday-vol-2-part-jeff-burstein

Vol. 3: - https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/fail-forward-friday-vol-3-learning-from-others-jeff-burstein

Vol. 4: - https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/fail-forward-friday-vol-4-potential-vs-kinetic-fails-from-burstein