Tips on Bus Dev

Ani Oko
Ani Oko
Aug 22, 2017 · 5 min read

I was working on a startup product in 2014/2015 and I needed to get a business up and running. It was an internship product where interns would find and apply for internship positions in Finland.

I designed the solution architecture for the first MVP, built it and later was able to hire others to take it to where it worked much better and better features.

I needed to get the supply side going. Businesses and startups are about demand and supply. Companies were my supply side and students were on the demand side.

I needed to find companies first, get job vacancies on a success fee agreement and then use those job vacancies to find trainees within 3 weeks or thereabout.

An acquaintance who we met a few years back at an incubator saw my post and offered to help. I had done some form of sales previously in 2009–2010 but this dude came and changed the sales/ business development game for me. Being that he worked for an indirect competitor I would say, he was interest to share his skills. That’s what I am about to share.

His suggested steps were as follows:

  1. Find a list of companies within a travel-able distance.
  2. Gather the list of HR decision makers
  3. Calculate your sales ratio/ funnel. i.e how many people you need to call to get a meeting, how many meetings you need to get in a day, how many to get in a week and how many to get in a month. How many of those will convert to sales within the first visit or second visit or third visit.
  4. Create a sales script, 1 minute long. Something you can remember
  5. Map out your list on those you’ll call everyday. Have a tally counter to indicate how many times you’ve called, when you’ve called and who you spoke to.
  6. Call them.
  7. Get meetings
  8. Sign the contract.

Did this work? You bet it did, I got meetings with companies that had over 20 million Euro a year in revenue, I got meetings with publicly listed companies.

It was super challenging for me because I was sailing against the winds and the current. This was Finland for goodness sake. The official language is Finnish, people are cold towards foreigners. Not to mention there aren’t a lot of people your color being successful. No reference point for them to believe you. I still had to be optimistic or delusional and press on.

I did so because I could land some of the meetings especially with companies that hired foreigners or people that travelled abroad.

I made a few mistakes on that product but I learned a lesson I wouldn’t have learnt sitting at home or doing other things. I remember this friend gave me two books, one on sales and one on eating the frog. Frog being doing things you would not normally do.

Phone calls or cold calling may not be the only option, some people swear by email marketing, some by sms marketing, some by advertising.

When you are startup and you are looking to solve the chicken and egg problem as they present it, what do you do? First there isn’t a chicken and egg problem. Once you wipe that out you’ll realise that the problem is a demand and supply problem. I’ve found that whoever talked about the chicken and egg problem didn’t know how to solve the problem. Anyone who talked about demand and supply ended up solving that problem using the supply first strategy and demand later.

I created and or commissioned two on the side products. One being a typical demand and supply case. I used similar technique or structure but used advertising. Again I was sailing against the wind. The language was Spanish, I spoke no Spanish. It worked to an extent, I got some teachers signup and created classes. I even taught some classes and got paid. I made a mistake and that was I did not integrate a payment system and wanted to test it with cash on hand payments. I paid dearly when after advertising for classes, some teachers would simply delete the classes by mistake or by design. One teacher did it twice on the same class. Can’t happen anymore now since students need to pay upfront, by design.

In order to generate revenue using the strategy I shared above, I needed only one company and I needed to provide 10 or 20 students for them to choose from.

I remember sometimes I had 60 students applying for one position. We helped a PHD student get hired and that was a joy. We got paid nicely!

To generate revenue from one class, I need at least 5 to 10 to 20 students signing up for that class and paying upfront. That’s easy don’t you think?

Yes and no. No because Isaac Newton’s law said an object remains at the state of rest until a force acts on it. Pardon my Physics I didn’t really like it. I like making complicated things simple.

So until I or whoever is involved moves our butts, nothing will happen.

Wisdom is nothing unless it is applied successfully

Take this technique, rinse and repeat it by doing things that don’t scale.

A good growth rate is 5 to 7 percent per week, while an exceptional growth rate is 10 percent per week.

That’s quite hard if you don’t know what you are doing. Other factors do come in like having internet, ability to make calls or reach people, ability to eat ramen noodles if you may. Just kidding, all the challenges in this world will come to you when you are willing to accept them.

My goal is to create multiple streams of income, find people who can do simple non scalable things and get the law of newton in motion. Track results, improve and generate revenue. In calm waters of course. Maybe the rough tide teaches you how to sail.

If you’ll like to be involved with teachera.org in Nigeria or Gospelfinancing please let me know how you want to be involved. I am open to hearing more.

Am a Business Architect/ Business Analyst by day and I practice startup sorcery by night. I am applying these techniques on Daycarer online booking service where we provide nanny services in London . Am also in the trenches as you can see.

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