Improve cold calling, Getting the most from investors, The impact of physical proximity and more #0021

13/12/2023

INVESTOR MANAGEMENT

Mario Gabriele, Founder at The Generalist, provides a comprehensive guide for startup founders on optimizing investor relationships in “How can founders get value from their VCs?”

• Go for investors with strong Brand Recognition:

  • Avlok Kohli: "From the pre-seed through the Series A, establishing credibility is one of your core challenges... Brand recognition can be especially useful when it’s time to raise the next round of funding... I’ve witnessed this firsthand; you can see the impact of someone with a brand versus someone without one in the conversion rate from an introduction to the first meeting being scheduled."

• Most Helpful Angel Investors:

  • Christina Cacioppo: "In Vanta’s early days, our most helpful angels tended to be operators who weren’t working full-time... A couple of specific, seemingly small things that mattered a lot: Replied to emails and texts in < 30 minutes... Didn’t ask for information they didn’t need."

• On skepticism and Control:

  • Trae Stephens: "Be skeptical about the claims being made by investors during fundraising, and be stubborn with giving up governance/control. Share information as transparently as possible and invest time and effort into building personal relationships with your investors."

• On Closing Senior Talent:

  • Avlok Kohli: "By the Series B... investors can be effective in evaluating and closing very specific senior hires. These people might have hired dozens of people for a given role as entrepreneurs in the past, or they’ve seen another company go through the same process and can bring those lessons to bear."

SALES

Steli Efti, Founder & CEO at Close, provides a structured and actionable approach to improving cold call conversion rates in “Cold Call Conversion Rates: Funnel Metrics & Benchmarks”

• Defining the cold calling funnel:

  • "Here’s the thing—in the great majority of industries, you don’t close on the first phone call. Converting a new lead just doesn’t work like that. There are steps in between that you need to take, and this is your cold calling funnel."

  • "Just like any other sales funnel, your cold calling funnel has specific stages that potential customers will go through as they get closer to making a purchase.

    • We like to use the 30/50/50 benchmark as a goal

      • Reach 30 percent of the numbers we call, qualify 50 percent of the people we talk to, close 50 percent of the leads who are qualified"

• Tips to accelerate cold calling performance:

  • "Use social media to conduct warm calls: 

    • For B2B sales, LinkedIn is a great place to connect with people, so they already recognize your name when you get on the phone.

  • Use cold calling scripts that adapt to your prospects: 

    • Your sales calls shouldn’t be monologues. Use your script like an outline that guides the conversation, but allows you to ask questions and adapt to your prospect.

  • Send cold emails in addition to your cold call campaigns: 

    • You can even set up workflows for your cold outreach, getting in contact with your prospects via different methods.

  • Use a tool that helps your sales team dial faster with automation: 

    • For example, Close's Power Dialer [...] help your sales team go through lead lists faster by making sure you’re only connected when someone answers.

  • Optimize your cold calling strategy by conducting follow-up calls: 

    • Sales isn’t a once-and-done strategy. Optimize your follow-up skills, and you’ll be better prepared to close more deals"

CULTURE

Rita McGrath, Founder at Valize, highlights the significance of physical proximity in workplace communication and productivity in “WFH? RTO? Remembering the Allen Curve and Why It Matters Now”

• Relevance of the Allen Curve in Modern Workplaces:

  • "The Allen curve estimates that we are four times as likely to communicate regularly with someone sitting two meters away from us as with someone twenty meters away and that we almost never communicate with colleagues on separate floors or in separate buildings.”

• Impact of Proximity on Communication and Productivity:

  • The article discusses how physical proximity in the workplace enhances communication and affects productivity.

  • “When offices were open, engineers working in the same building... received 22 percent more online feedback than engineers with distant teammates... Yet sitting together reduces engineers’ programming output, particularly for senior engineers.”

• Challenges in Maintaining Communication without Proximity:

  • “So, if a team needs rich flows of information to solve problems, come up with novel solutions and benefit from being co-located somewhere, you’ve only got about 10 meters to play with. Once people are outside that magical radius, much more effort needs to go into the sharing and processing of information. If people are on Zoom screens, not physically present at all or present at different times or on different days, the communicative benefits of close proximity disappear."

GROWTH

Emily Kramer & Kathleen Estreich, former marketing leaders at Asana, Box, Intercom, Carta, & Scalyr, provide actionable insights and strategies for running effective marketing campaigns, emphasizing the importance of combining marketing 'fuel' (content, branding) and 'engine' (growth, demand generation) in a coordinated manner in  “How to run effective campaigns”

• The Concept of Campaigns in Marketing:

  • "Campaigns are marketing initiatives that involve both fuel & engine. Campaigns are typically focused on a specific segment or segment(s) of your audience. Campaigns are often oriented around a 'theme' (creative concept, product or content launch, event, trend, etc)."

• Managing Campaigns:

  • '[...] almost all campaigns involve cross-marketing collaboration. This can make the process of planning campaigns and executing them complicated. To avoid that, you need a DRI (directly responsible individually) and tight feedback loops across the team. Early on, it’s typically the role of the head of marketing to help universally prioritise and lead campaigns."

• Campaign briefs are not busywork, they’re a requirement:

  • "To get a campaign right, you need to plan for all the moving pieces. But more so than that, you need to make sure the campaign is worth doing in the first place and get alignment on what you are doing and why. And the best way to do that is with an MKT1 GACCS brief:

    • GACCS stands for: Goals, Audience, Creative, Channels, Stakeholders Early in the planning process

    • Writing the GACCs will become the most valuable 10-30 minutes you spend on a campaign—and save you hours on back-and-forth later."

• When you find a campaign that works…:

  • "You don’t constantly need to come up with brand new, totally original campaign ideas. Instead, you need to double down on what works and continually add value for your audience. So when something works, create an internal playbook for it."

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