The Business Fixer Blog by Wes Schaeffer, The Sales Whisperer®

The Fast Start, Slow Sale: Brandon Bruce on Business Development

Written by Wes Schaeffer | Jul 06, 2018

How to launch and monetize a new idea fast

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Sales Tips you'll learn in The Sales Podcast...

  • UC Santa Barbara with co-founder
  • Built some websites
  • Found a gap in the market in 2011
    • Salesforce.com
    • Gmail was growing for businesses
    • Wanted to work with Salesforce from within Gmail in one screen
  • Solo-founders can suffer from being alone
  • Co-founders can break up
  • They've been friends for 18 years so they can be open and honest with each other
    • Helps in the startup world where you have to move fast
  • Ryan is in Irvine, CA but Brandon is in Knoxville, TN
    • It was more affordable to scale being in Tennessee
  • Brandon reached out to each person he saw posting online that they wanted a better interface
    • Emailed them
    • Called them
  • They got 1,000 to sign up as beta testers and soon realized it was bigger than a free add-on
  • Got the first 500 paying customers
  • How to launch and monetize a new idea
  • Hit up friends and family for seed money
  • How to price your new software / solution
    • Special offer for beta users
    • Put a time frame on it
  • How to double your prices
  • Who to hire first
    • Brought on two sales, marketing, and customer support first before Dreamforce
    • Ryan was solo on the development side along with consultants
    • Engineers were and are hard to find and keep
  • How to hire via referrals and recommendations
  • Be easy to meet with, especially in the beginning
    • Most self-select out
  • How to originate and close an enterprise sale
  • What ads are working to grow sales today
    • Leveraging LinkedIn, Gmail, and Outlook
  • How to structure your sales team for the SMB vs enterprise sale
  • The art of the slow sale

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Links Mentioned In The Sales Podcast