Sales Models – Online, Inside, and Field Sales – How and When to Choose a Sales Model for Your Startup

The ENET meeting on March 21, 2016 is on sales for startup and early stage companies. Our first focus will be to help the founders with the question of how and when to choose a sales model for your startup company.  In that early stage the goal should be to start to generate sales as soon as possible, with a minimum viable product. This is the first phase of customer discovery and validation, to establish an impactful value proposition.  As Jack Derby (one of our speakers) has written ” At the outset, just focus on selling some stuff for the simple purpose of having customers who are paying you money and from whom you can learn the following:

• Why they bought your product
• How they are using those same products
• What do they want to see in the future, so that …
• You have the ability to work closely with these early customers and determine the financial value that they receive at their companies.  

The company will next want to determine a scalable selling platform and a cost-effective sales model.  We will then discuss these three major sales models and the experience of our speakers in applying these sales models in early stage companies?

Online – Products that the customer is able to find, determine if it meets their needs, and purchase on their own are self procured, usually online.

• Inside – Inside sales is when the sale is completed with the sales person and customer interacting remotely.  Driven by technology, inside sales models are being used more frequently in B2B and some higher end B2C transactions
• Outside – Field sales, or outside sales, are ‘face to face’ customer sales.  For higher priced, more complex products, cases where there are numerous stakeholders involved in the purchasing decision, consultative sales, or products that need in person demonstrations – visits with the customer are necessary to seal the deal.

Our three speakers are all sales experts used to developing sales for, and mentoring, early stage companies.  They will discuss getting those first sales, and then, successively when, how and what sales model or combination of sales models is right for your startup or early stage company.  The panel will be moderated by ENET’s long term chairman who received and IEEE-USA award for contribution to the entrepreneurial community and has been recognized as one of the “Top 20 Boston Startup Attorneys”.

Agenda:

600 -700 PM Registration & networking

700 -710 PM ENET Chairman’s announcements

710 -725 PM E Minute – Up to 3 Startup companies presentations

725 -815 PM – 3 or 4 expert speakers on the night’s topic

815 -830 PM – Audience / Speakers Q & A

830 -900 PM – Final networking including meeting speakers

Speakers: 

Jack Derby is Head Coach and President @ Derby Management, a 25 year old boutique management consulting firm, focuses its expertise in three primary services for its 400+ customers: Business & Strategic Planning; Sales & Marketing Productivity Improvement; Senior Management Development Coaching. 

www.derbymanagement.com/   He is an active angel investor and past Chairman of Common Angels, rebranded to Converge Venture Partners, where he remains a parter. Jack is also currently a member of eight profit and non-profit Board of Directors including Reiser Inc., where he is Chairman. In his spare time Jack teaches. He is a Professor of Marketing at Tufts, where in 2015, he was named “Teacher of the Year” and Lecturer at MIT in Business Planning and Marketing.  Jack’s background includes past positions as CEO of Mayer Electronics Corporation, President of CB Sports, President of Litton Industries Medical Systems, CEO of Datamedix Corporation and President of Becton Dickinson Medical Systems, before he formed in 1990, Derby Management. Jack is extremely active in the New England emerging and middle market business communities. Jack has been named to Mass High Tech’s All Star Team.  Jack has been the Founder or Co-founder of 12 companies. Jack has also served at Chairman of the Association for Corporate Growth,  Chairman of the MIT Enterprise Forum, Vice Chair of the Smaller Business Association of New England, President of the University Club of Boston. Jack is a graduate of Boston College, the University of Chicago and the United States Peace Corps.  He divides his time between working in Boston, living and snowboarding in southern Vermont during the winter and living and surfing on the beach in NH whenever he can.

Emmanuelle Skala, VP Sales & Customer Success @ DigitalOcean, a cloud infrastructure provider focused on simplifying web infrastructure for software developers.  https://www.digitalocean.com/ She brings to our panel extensive software startup experience and a proven sales vision that has been honed over the last 20 years.Prior to Digital Ocean, Emmanuelle was VP Sales at Influitive, where she led sales growing the business 10x in 2yrs. Grew team from 4 to 40.  She was responsible for Managed Sales Development, Commercial Sales, Enterprise Sales, Account Management and Sales Ops/Enablement.  Before Influitive, she was VP, Global Channel Sales at Sophos, where she built the company’s global channel organization. In this role, she earned a number of industry titles, including CRN Channel Chief in 2012 and 2013, and CRN Top 100 Women in the Channel in 2013.  Previously, Emannuelle was also the first salesperson at two B2B technology companies: Endeca, which was acquired by Oracle for more $1 billion, and Vertica, acquired by Hewlett-Packard Company. In both of these roles, she rapidly built the sales teams and processes that drove revenue growth and company expansion.  She is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon, with a BS in Industrial Management, with an MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business, where she was Co-President of the Entrepreneur Exchange.

Mark Ruthfield, Vice President of Sales, Executive Team @t Zaius, which empowers B2C marketers to maximize customer lifetime revenue.. https://www.zaius.com/ Mark is a Sales Business Leader, Executive Management Team Leader, Corporate Officer with over 20+ years of business experience in leading technology companies in start-up, turn-around, and accelerated growth situations. He is a leader that inspires others in driving record-breaking year-over-year Sales growth results and profitability. Prior to Zaisu, Mark was Vice President of Sales @ Yesware, where he was Awarded the “2016 Top 25 Most Influential Inside Sales Professionals Prestigious Award”​ by the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals across the organization’s 10,000+ members with 63 Chapters internationally for the “6th”​ consecutive year!  Previsously, he was Vice President of Sales @ ZoomInfo, where he spearheaded the ZoomInfo Sales Dream Team, and  more than quadrupled sales over the last 4 years.  ZoomInfo’s 2014 revenue results were the highest in company history from a Sales results, year-over-year growth, and profitability standpoint.  Prior to that he had the position New Business Development Sales @Forrester Research. , Mark has considerable experience working effectively within a start-up environment and building-out scalable sales organizations via repeatable sales processes and best practices.  He is the author of a number of publications in the sales field and a frequent speaker at events and webinars to large audiences (hundreds) discussing industry trends and Sales best practices.  Mark is an honors graduate of University of Massachusetts at Amherst – Isenberg School of Management

Moderator: 

Robert Adelson, business and tax attorney, partner at Boston law firm of Engel & Schultz LLP, and Chairman of The Boston Entrepreneurs’ Network.  Rob has been an attorney for over 30 years specialized in business, tax, stock and options, employment, contracts, financings, trademarks and intellectual property.  Rob began as an associate at major New York City  law firms before returning home to Boston in 1985 where he has since been a partner in small and medium sized firms before joining his present firm in 2004.  Rob represents entrepreneurs, start-ups and small companies, independent contractors and employees and executives, and family businesses.    Rob is a frequent speaker on business law topics and author of numerous articles published in Boston Business Journal, Mass High Tech and other publications. He has been named among the “Top 20 Boston Startup Lawyers” by ChubbyBrain.com, a website that provides tools for entrepreneurs. Rob has been on the ENET Board since 2002 and Chairman since 2009 and is also a Co-Founder and Board member of the 128 Innovation Capital Group. In January 2016, he received the professional achievement award from IEEE-USA for “extreme dedication and contributions to the IEEE entrepreneurship community.” He holds degrees from Boston University, B.A., summa cum laude, Northwestern University (Chicago), J.D., Law Review, and New York University,  LL.M. in Taxation.  (www.ExecutiveEmploymentAttorney.com)