Bootstrapper.com - Confessions of Serial Entrepreneurs

Friends, Family and clients still ask on occasion “how did you do it – how did you manage to sell over $600K in shoes?”

As mentioned in previous posts, the supposed “secret” to selling is actually not a secret at all. Based on my experience, there are three skills you must embrace to become a top-tier sales Jedi in today’s hypercompetitive marketplace:

1) Understand selling is just a numbers game

One day you’ll sell $11K in three hours of work and the next you’ll struggle to sell $1K over the span of an entire day. But in the aggregate, remaining steadfastly focused on your goals will pay off, with a gradual climb toward long-term success.

2) Understand the 80/20 rule

As mentioned in post #2 of this series, memorize the 20% that makes 80% of the difference until it’s instinctive. This is imperative; your long-term viability as a sales professional depends on it.

3) Develop the ability to quickly identify, hone and leverage the triggers of your target consumer

Of the above three skills, point #3 will catapult you the furthest and fastest. Triggers become significantly more apparent as the frequency of sales presentations increase.

Nordstrom is the ideal environment for scaling sales trigger understanding because a sales rep executes roughly 20 presentations/day during the week and more than 40/day on the weekend. Retail is a fast-paced and transaction-oriented environment. Therefore, within a very short amount of time you’re blessed with the benefit of executing hundreds transactions and obtaining large swaths of customer feedback. These are crucial in facilitating your understanding of the wants, needs and ultimately the triggers of your target consumer.

The downside of this type of sales environment is the very “short leash” you’re given. If you don’t produce the boot will arrive on the horizon very fast. You are expected to ramp up sales significantly faster than in other sales contexts.

For instance, on the other side of the pendulum reside enterprise sales. In the beginning, these are long, drawn out and sporadic transactions (2 – 6 month sales cycle). Every opportunity to identify and hone sales triggers must be cherished. In this environment, you are given a longer lead time to “figure it out,” but even then your “leash” is only as long as the market allows – which isn’t more than four months.

Cost Per Call campaigns are becoming ever so popular in the affiliate space from an advertiser’s point of view. From an advertiser and affiliate point of view, it seems like an ultimate win win proposition for both parties. The advertiser receives quality consumer based inquiries about their product and or service and the affiliate gets paid for this inquiry instead of just getting paid when a consumer orders a product.

It does though have risks for the advertiser and the advertiser must protect themselves accordingly. The points below should be the key negotiating points in the setting up of any new cost per call campaign.

(A) Call Time

You must be very specific in terms of the calls that you are receiving. The industry norm is 30 seconds. In this time the call center should be able to weed out all the candidates who don’t fit the specific criteria of your perspective ” buyer”.

(B) Where the calls are coming from (Traffic Source)

This is important, as some traffic sources tend to convert better than others and you don’t want to waste valuable call center time on traffic sources that are not converting. Mobile Display click to call tends to convert the better in comparison to email and online display advertising based calls. You should create lots of different phone #’s and attach each phone number to a specific traffic source when beta testing.

(C) Call Time of Day

You want to specific on the time of day you want your calls as you don’t want to order calls from a publisher at certain times of day when you don’t have reps present.

(D) Call Wait Time

You want to make sure that if you ingratiate a specific call time that you pay for that your rep picks up the phone right away to give you the best shot at qualifying that prospect. Consumers tend to lose interest after 20 seconds of waiting.

(E) Price Per Call

I don’t think I need to elaborate on this but if you are paying a sky-high rate on a cost per call as an advertiser you could really lose out. It is in both the best interest of the publisher and the advertiser to negotiate a fair rate, as this is the only way to ensure a long-term relationship.

*As an advertiser, I always recommend testing out cost per call on your own internal media buys before you come to an agency like ours. The reason is because you will come to a perspective network with more manageable expectations and you will be in most cases looking to scale a campaign rather than start one out which is always a lot smoother.

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to let everyone know that I am making San Francisco my new home. I look forward to working with the Bebo team and living in another amazing city. Hello San Francisco!

Richie

Hey Everyone,

As you’ve probably read, I was just part of a group that acquired Bebo. I am pleased- better yet, I am PSYCHED to let you know that I am part of a team that has acquired Bebo. There are so many reasons for our excitement-and we will get into those in the near future. For the next little while, we’ll be behind closed doors spending time with the Bebo team and gaining deeper insights into the worldwide communities on the platform. For now, I just want to say how excited and grateful I am for this opportunity-and to everyone that helped make this happen…..Stay Tuned!

Hey Everyone,

This event is going to be awesome! Hope you can all make it!

Social Networking Your Business, Tues June 8th

Social Media tools provide professionals with an unprecedented channel for building business networks, both locally and across the globe.  B2Bs contended with many challenges can more effectively run their businesses by communicating in real time with others who experienced the same challenges. By immersing your business in prospect-rich networks, you will benefit from idea exchanges, online events, positive brand encounters, development of lead-generating relationships, and results in new revenues for B2B organizations.

Join Brightmap, Ultra Light Startups, and ourselves at Fearless Business for a one of a kind opportunity to master various aspects of encompassing social networking to benefit your business.  A panel of professionals in the B2B community will attend to discuss how to use social media to benefit your business.

Click on the link below to learn more and purchase your tickets today!

B2B Networking, Tuesday June 8th

This has to have been one of the most memorable Affiliate Summit’s that we have attended. The Bootstrapper crew consisting of myself and three other adventure cravers got to the Rio a little bit late on Monday after a 2 hour layover in Chicago. We walked around the conference hall and had the pleasure of visiting old friends who have since gone on to start highly successful affiliate networks.

We were lucky enough to catch the Geek Fest keynote on the last day, which I thought was fascinating. The panelists talked in great detail about the evolution of affiliate marketing and how far it has come. The world ofaffiliate marketing has definitely in my mind as I think back to its earliest days changed. Back then, Commission Junction was the main and only legitimate network to grab offers from and then on the other side of the coin the there was the wild wild west of email marketing. These were the days when Mortgage companies and lead aggregators would pay $6 a lead from random bulk mailers and most advertisers had almost no clue on how to incorporate affiliate marketing into their marketing budgets. I could only dream back to those days

Being an industry veteran and now presently on the venture capital side, as I walked through all the booths filled with new exciting cutting edge affiliate networks it an unleashed a bit of excitement in my mind. I remember what it was like to be apart of an ad network startup with hefty ambitions and I remembered the difference that one key connection could make at a conference to the bottom line of a business.

Affiliate Summit is by far one of my favorite conferences, it is a must attend in my opinion for anybody who is involved in any form of online advertising. Everybody who is somebody is either exhibiting or doing a keynote presentation on the new product or service that they are offering to the masses. I can’t do anything but sit on the edge of my seat and look forward to Affiliate Summit East because as I’m sure this conference will surpass the last one as they always do.”

Hey everyone, a buddy of mine is producing an awesome event that will be keynoted by Al Gore. Yes, THE Al Gore.

Here’s details. I hope to see you there!
The best and brightest innovators and innovations of the education world will soon gather at the Phoenix Convention Center. Hosted by the Scottsdale, Arizona-based EDU Research Group (http://www.edurg.com), EduRG Conference 2010 will be held February 27-28, 2010, providing a venue for students, teachers, businesses and technology to work together for the betterment of higher education. Featuring a keynote address by former Vice President and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, as well as speakers and workshops covering all aspects of education and hundreds of exhibitors displaying the latest in education-based products and technology, the Conference is guaranteed to have something for anyone seeking to further their education, improve their teaching methods, or showcase their school or business.

Students are encouraged to attend the Conference, free of charge, to meet representatives from participating colleges and universities. In turn, academic institutions will have the opportunity to recruit prospective students, while meeting the top Education product and service providers in the country. Businesses are offered brand exposure, partnership opportunities and access to high-level Education executives from around the globe. For more information on becoming an exhibitor, visit http://www.edurg.com/events/ai/exhibitor.asp. Sponsors for EduRG Conference 2010 include NanoProfessor, the Career Education Corporation, YourDegree.com, Geary Interactive, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the Business Marketing Association and the Arizona Technology Council, Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Arizona Department of Commerce. Academic Partners include the University of Phoenix, Arizona State University, the University of Arizona, Colorado Technical University, and Pearson eCollege. For sponsorship and partnership opportunities, email info@edurg.com, or visit www.edurg.com.

On this great winter day, the final day of the year, I would like to invite you, my loyal reader and friend to check out a book by another friend of mine that is coming out today - Pull - About the power of the semantic web and how the world is changing and data is becoming its primary positive driver. I highly recommend the book to you and hope to hear you like it!

Happy New Years!

Richie

I’m still following the health care debate, with a special focus on how it will impact our community’s ability to bootstrap ideas into small businesses.

The New York Times blog offers a great recap of how the pending health care legislation affects small businesses. The legislation provides a mandate for small businesses to provide health insurance, but the fines for not complying end up being far cheaper than providing insurance. It also creates a small business health insurance exchange that may or may not (I bet not) rein in costs.

This makes it cost-effective for small businesses to drop health insurance coverage for their employees. The incentive to provide health care comes not from the government, but from companies who have built a successful business model and are looking to recruit top talent.

But I’m more interested in the bootstrap stage… what happens to the people who want to grow ideas into small businesses. I’ve argued that health care woes, at the margin, limit the field of entrepreneurs who can take the plunge into bootstrapping world. I’d hoped legislation would ease this burden by providing access to affordable insurance. Instead, it raises the hurdle by mandating entrepreneurs purchase coverage, swelling the cost of living for self-starters. In the future, expect the bootstrapping community will skew towards the already-wealthy and away from innovative youngsters the middle class.

At the 9.14 KM view, the bootstrapping community today jump starts the economy of tomorrow. This legislation undeniably burdens American innovation and punishes our enterprising community. The already difficult path to bootstrapping a business just got tougher to traverse. Shame on our leaders.

The plus side is that daredevils will keep playing with fire. No matter how outsized the risk, there’ll always be exceptional risk takers who rise to the challenge. And our community is talented at spinning struggle into opportunity.

Case in point, I’m already exploring starting a health care/venture capital company, one that simply provides discounted health care in exchange for equity in promising ideas. If you have experience in the health care industry, I would love to talk with you about this!

Happy holidays and best wishes to all our readers in the new year.

Hello friends,

We have a new episode of “Startup or Shut up!” available for viewing. Take a look at this week’s holiday episode and let me know what you think. I welcome all your feedback and comments. Richie.

Hello friends, my show “Startup or Shut Up!” was taped today and ready for viewing!

“Startup or Shut Up!” is a half-hour weekly internet TV Show.  It consists of tech & startup news, two interviews (one CEO interview and one VC or Legal Industry interview) and a call-in segment.  Here is a link to our past episodes:  CLICK HERE

Please email me at rich@bootstrapper.com to let me know your feedback or leave a comment below.

This is awesome, Happy Hannukah!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULtglogZbR8

I was going back and forth with a friend of mine over email and I’d like to public acknowledge him because I felt special by this email.

It came from a blackberry and was a personal note saying: “Sorry, I’m a party right now and can’t properly respond to this note as I would like to”

Now, this was uncalled for, he was at a party and could have just responded in the morning, instead he sent me that note and I went ‘wow, that’s really nice’.

So a major shout-out to my buddy Jeff Pulver for being so dam courteous.

So I recently made an introduction between 2 colleagues and one of them sent an email to the other person saying thanks for the connection and moved me to BCC so I don’t get stuck on the email chain. Now, I’ve never seen anyone do this before despite being party to thousands of introductions and you know what, it’s brilliant. BCC the introducer and save the extra email chains!

For any of you who are in NYC, stop whatever you are doing and go directly to time square. There you will find a new American Eagle store with a gigantic video billboard of a young girl in suggestive poses with this amazing very long hypnotic video billboard with swirly patterns on it and nothing else. I was across the street at the time and the giant swirly stuff led me across the street and the video billboard got me stuck there. It’s perhaps the best outdoor ad I ever saw. Simply amazing. Go see it.