A sustainable startup will need to close deals. The bloodline for any organization is its cash flow. Cash flow is necessary to build a stable base as well as accelerate growth for that startup. People vote by their $$$, and when our startups solve a huge pain/problem, make people’s lives significantly better, customers will want to pay for it.

A good sales system:

• Predictable Result ROI.
• Self-managing system.

The preparation :

• One dedicated prospecting person & a sales CRM application.
• Have proven products & services that generate revenues.
• Lifetime value of customers is more than $10,000

Step by Step to build a sales system.

• Identify ideal customer profile.
• Build your list of customers that fit the ideal profile.
• Run outbound email campaign to the list. Write text-based email that seems to come from one single sales person, not HTML type email.
• Build contents, seminars, events for inbound lead generation targeting the list.
• Sell the dream. Paint a vision of what kinds of solutions will solve their problems. Then connect your solution to their key business issue(s) and dream.
• Pass the Baton to deal closer person.

How to identify an ideal customer profile:

Simple.Careers helps our “Perfect Customers” to market their hiring position to different social media channels, leverage the startups’ internal teams as well as fanbase/customers to spread their hiring position via social network friends.

Customer profile criterias are company size, industry, product type, current spending on the need/problem/pain/dream, no agency or dedicated person in place for the need, using inferior tools.

Simple.Careers ideal customers are:

• currently not using a recruiting agency.
• have products that put emphasizes on visual and design.
• do not have a dedicated hiring person.
• spend $1000 plus per month to find the right hires via job listing sites.
• recently close a round of funding.
• currently are using an inferior SaaS tool for hiring.
• MIT or UC Berkeley alumni.

Help startups to turn our product users/social media followers into our employees.

Build a list of ideal customers.

Top sources to find ideal customers, get contacts

Jigsaws

OneSource

Hoovers

InsideView

ZoomInfo — http://www.zoominfo.com/business/customers/sales

Data Salad