You Can Have The Best Development Execution - But IF You Fail At Sales, You Fail At Doing Business.

A CB report showed that lack of cash is the second reason for startups failing. In most cases, startups have cash just for a short runaway. And then, they face reality.

It’s just like Gary Vee put it in his Ask Gary Vee book:

“Cash is like oxygen. When you don't need it, you don't notice it. When you do need it, it's the only thing you need. If Cash is Oxygen is your priority."

In what follows, I'll talk about Techsylvania - the latest event I attended - and how you can leverage this kind of opportunity as a startup founder.

This event is a huge success - keynote speakers, Startup Avalanche program, networking area, more than 3000 attendees and there’s a lot more to say.

Ever since I started attending Techsylvania, I was quite surprised to see that a lot of startups participated in the expo area. What surprised me more, though, was that the number of startups who scheduled meetings with potential clients and investors was close to zero.

How do you make sure you get the most value from an event?

1. Do your research and build the list of people you want to meet. By research, I mean knowing essential details about the person you are about to meet, their background and trying to find something you have in common with them. You’ll use this as an ice-breaker.
2. Most events have match-making tools (at Techsylvania I used Deal Room Events). They allow you to search for people who present interest in your startup, so my advice is start approaching them in order to schedule a meeting. If you don’t have these tools, most events have Slack channels with all the participants and if the Slack channel is missing, there are for sure Facebook events to pull contacts from. You get the point, there are a lot of ways to start connecting with people from the event you attend.
3. Start contacting them - you can do it through different channels: Slack, match-making tools, LinkedIn, cold calling, cold emailing, etc.
4. Take the process step by step. The first goal when you contact a potential client/partner is to schedule a short 20-minute meeting. You don’t want to stay 3 hours at an event with a potential client. At Techsylvania, after a 10-minute discussion, I secured a 100k project. It’s about being there. Almost every time, it’s just about being there.
5. The actual meeting. As I said, find the common ground. It’s really powerful. The meeting should be an intro one, just to have the necessary context to go back to them.
6. Follow-up. Everything you’ve read above means nothing if you don’t follow-up. For me, it’s the most important part of the sales process, because it shows you be persistent, yet not pushy.

Here's an infographic you can save for further reference:

If you found this article useful, be sure to leave a comment. Let me know in the comments below what kind of struggles do you face when doing sales in a startup. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.