Troy Yohn

Being in sales and marketing I get to see my share of corny/hokie advertising. "Make 100 million dollars in your first week" or "Call Mr. 10,000 to earn more income than you ever thought you could" or "Earn BIG Money Now". I keep seeing more and more ads along these lines and I just don't get it. What I really want to know is who reads an ad like this and says "wow, I better contact this advertiser?". Is PT Barnum right - is there truly a sucker born every minute?

Along this same line last week I was on the road selling a commission based advertising/marketing solution (you don't pay unless us unless we get you track-able results). While its always a challenge getting past objections with any sale, it was harder to get the sale this time because previous sales people made fantastic offers that didn't provide any ROI - not even enough to pay for the ad. I know a lot of sales people only want to make the sale and will say just about anything to make it but personally I don't see the wisdom in making the sale at the cost of the life time value of the customer. Going back to my previous post, I have to wonder if these salespeople really know what they are selling. Do they really know if and how the product will work for this particular customer? Are they just ignorant, confused or are they outright lying? I assume its all of the above depending on the person.

If you're in sales and marketing and you're selling a product that is everything you say it is, I want thank you... if you don't know if your product does what you say it does or if you're outright lying, please stop screwing it up for the rest of us!

Recently all I've blogged about has been my startup side project Bidboxr.com. While I like sharing my experience trying to get things going - I think its time for a change up.

Today's Topic Sales
Going back to my first experience in sales - cold calling on small to medium size businesses trying to sell advertising - I'd like to share what I learned. Unlike a lot of first time sales people I was very successful. I didn't read the books or listen to sales tapes - here's what I did and why I think I was so successful.

1. Know what you're selling.
While that might seem like a no brainier - you'd be surprised... Over the years I've had numerous company's ask me to help them with their sales only to find out they weren't clear on what they were actually selling. For instance: one company ask me to help sell their new product - they gave me the literature to review and after reading through it I still had to ask: "what are you selling" They beat around the bush and then finally they said "We really don't know". It wasn't a case that they didn't know the benefits vs features which is the typical issue with companies, this company actually didn't have a clear sense of what the product was. Not an easy sell!

2. Believe and (Know what you're selling/ part 2)
Believe in your product or don't bother to try to sell it! If you have belief in your product it will show - you'll feel real to your customers - you won't come off as the "typical salesperson/asshole". And I wanted to add this extra little bit although I expect most salespeople know - what you are REALLY selling. I'll give a simply example and leave it at that... If your product is "Scar Removal Cream" your not selling scar removal your selling confidence ... if my scar is gone I feel better about myself

3. Identify your prospects
Take the time to make a list of 100 leads. Create a list by starting with the "worse" lead and ending with the "best" possible lead. Start with #50 on the list and research the company. Get to know what they are all about. Learn by putting yourself in their shoes...

Learn: What the company does.
Learn: Who is the decision maker?
Learn: What does your lead think of products like yours?
Learn: What does your lead use for a solution now?
Learn: Why do they want your product?
Learn: Why should they want your product?
Learn: Whatever you can!

4. Practice - Make the call - Time to make your mistakes - learn again
Practice what you're going to say, practice it a lot....
Now it's time to make your mistakes. Make the sales call to prospect #50. Since your starting in the middle of the list the mistakes you make on this step will help you make the sale to top part of the list. Learn as much as you can when you don't make the sale. Try to discover the why of why didn't you make the sale?

5. Make the sale and follow up
Now that you've failed a few times and learned what doesn't work - make a sale. And not only should you make the sale you should try to develop a good relationship with the company. Under promise and over deliver - Repeat sales are easier...

To sum it up. Know what you're really selling, believe in the product, learn about who you're selling too, make mistakes, make the sale, develop a relationship.

It's been interesting watching Bidboxr.com stats:

Over 2,000 unique visitors
Over 10,000 page views
Over 2,500 searches - since we started tracking them...

The sites is doing reasonable well but we might have found a new direction for the technology thanks to David Cohen of TechStars. With a little tweak here and there we should be able to implement the new idea. Over the next few weeks I'll be working on it... I'll let you know how it goes.

I've been testing several ways to reach potential customers for Bidboxr.com so that when we launch I'll have a good feel for what works and what doesn't. Since we will be using our interactive ad banners to reach bidders I thought it would be a good idea to test a few "normal" ad banners to see if people really click on them. I set up a small budget for PPC banners with Adbrite.com and believe it or not people really do click on banners. We've seen a lot of activity (searches for items, new registrations and page views) that I can trace directly from our ad banner. That's great news for Bidboxr.com.

Next Up the Launch!

I've started pre-launch marketing for Bidboxr.com. So far I've attracted nearly 500 unique visitors. (More on how I did that in a different post) The reason I've been doing pre-launch marketing is two fold. I wanted to see how people use the site and I wanted to make sure the site functioned correctly. I've learned a few interesting things that will have an impact on the launch. What I review next might seem obvious but its higher hurdle than you might think.

Why do people visit auction sites?

1. Sellers want to sell more stuff.
2. Users want to find stuff their interested in acquiring

As I reviewed the searched logs I noticed something interesting. Out of the 500 users almost no one was looking for the same things. For a new startup that's a dilemma. How do you get sellers to list 1000s of items if you don't have 1000s of bidders bidding on those items or vise versa how do you get 1000s of people bidding if you don't have 1000s of sellers? The classic chicken and egg - or rather which came first the seller or the bidder?

In my opinion and Steve agrees (co-founder) we need to find more sellers if we want to attract more users. We have several sellers but I think I might postpone the official lunch by a week while I work on getting more. I'll just have to convince them to have a patience while we build a great site.

I gave my first presentation about Compelature yesterday. It went well, although I need to practice more - I wasn't as comfortable as I usually am in front of a crowd. It only took a few minutes to explain about Compelature's content responsive auction technology and how we are using a decentralized model - i.e. Auctions are placed on many different web pages and are interconnected to the page's content. I fielded questions about how it works, is it secure for buyers, revenue model, when will it be launched, etc. It was nice to have a few people ask me if Compelature is my full time job... it will be :) All in all I think it was a good experience for me to back in front of people.

Here's a comment from the presentation:
"Another great MeetUp last night. Thanks to Josh and Larry from MapQuest for demo'ing the very cool new MapQuest Local (if you weren't able to make the meeting, you can check it out here: http://local.mapquest.com). Also thanks to Troy from Compelature.com who demo'ed his slick, distributed online auction system." - Jesse Engle

Tonight I'll be presenting Compelature to the New Tech Meetup of Central PA. I have 10 minutes to demonstrate Compelature's innovative content responsive auction technology. It should be interesting to hear feedback from the group. I'll let you know how it went in my next blog post.