Very excited about the Multi-Step Zaps! I've spent the last 20 minutes updating all our Zaps to be more fruitful and have a bit more to continue. The workflow is clean, the experience is great, and value is clear. Thank you!
If anyone has any idea how we can fix this, I'd love to not have to explain to all the investors/customers why I am messaging them pictures of cleavage..
Salesforce1 is going to allow anyone (that they vet in their LONG process) to connect to their millions of sales professionals. They are leaving this open to ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that interfaces with an API.
I look forward to Salesforce sending handwritten letters (http://maillift.com) and offering better mail options (http://lob.com). I’m pretty excited to see what comes of Salesforce1!!
I'd love to see the stats after this page stays on HN for a bit. (ie., how many people make it the entire way through; how many people click "take action")
Farming 100 leads by identifying possible companies and finding a good contact is about 10 hours of work for one person in my experience, if you are not working off of some sort of minimally qualified list.
• Yep! We are working off an extensive minimally qualified list.
Do you have 3+ people cranking on it?
• Correct again :)
Also, getting 23 answers out of a 100 calls sounds like a pipe dream unless you are calling very low into your target organizations. At a Director / VP Marketing level you'll be doing good to get 10 conversations in 100 calls.
• We haven't hit the hundred mark yet (as we just started this), but that looks like the number we are expecting. Maybe this is the "luck" part of startups? Over time, I see your point and it will make sense that the number evens out to a lower #
(1) Our cold calls aren't completely cold. We dig/farm for people or businesses we honestly believe we can help! It's not too hard to find someone losing out on links or driving traffic away from their site who we can help.
(2) Each call is a learning experience (ref: lean startup?). We are not pressing for sales (as you may infer from our pipeline at the bottom of the article), but looking for their pain... setting up a demo (hopefully)... then selling if there is a GOLDEN fit.
That's all I do. If you have a simple and useful idea that's not too complicated, it is totally worth going for.
Tip: document everything. Document so well anyone can run your 'micro startup'. You never know when you will get a new idea and want to hire someone to take over your company.