I’m coming to your town…
can I share what I’ve learned and show you our product?
After 3.5 years of doing it the old way, I wanted to try something new. We have a new version of our product coming out, we used a different method for development and product management, and its forced me to rethink everything I knew about marketing and sales. This new approach is inspired by Paul Graham’s “Doing Things That Don’t Scale”, Steli Efti’s PandoDaily article “Why startups should use the phone”, and Jason Fried’s latest post on how 37Signals took a different approach with their latest product.
I want to meet startups and young companies that give a shit about their customers. That is my target market: founders, heads of customers service and sales leaders who offer voice/phone as a channel for interaction, or are unsure about doing so (turns out lots of startups have a fear of phone calls; I have data and processes that can fix that.)
I want to speak with you. Share the data we have collected on how different channels (voice, chat, SMS, etc.) work for various products/services, in sales and service scenarios. I want to share our lessons-learned on customer acquisition and retention. I have a ton of experience dealing with really big companies and doing bus-dev deals. If you are selling to the enterprise I would be happy to discuss that with you.
I want to show you our product. See if its a good fit. Set you up right there and then, on the spot. Let you try it yourself and see if it addresses your pain.
You see, in the past I would delegate this to someone. I would write a blog post or rely on one of our channel partners to generate the sales we needed to drive our business. Worse yet, I would rely on my network of contacts, all of whom would gladly sign-up due to our relationship.
No more.
No talking to journalists about our startup and expecting them to drive traffic. No showcasing our wares at partner events and expecting them to market and sell on our behalf. No more discussion about new features/ideas without having real customers demand it.
I need to do this hand-to-hand. I want to show you what we have built and let you try it yourself. And I want to learn from the experience. Along the way, I will be joined by some amazing founders (good friends). They will share their stories and join the conversation. This is the magic of tech startups: community, engagement, growth.
My hit-list includes (but is not limited to) L.A. (duh, next door), Vegas, Salt Lake, San Diego, San Francisco/South Bay, Portland, Seattle, Denver/Boulder, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Chicago, Detroit, Charlotte, Miami, Omaha, Boston, D.C. and New York (where I grew up). Did I miss your city? HIT ME UP!!!!!
I would love to visit you. Here is a quick link so we can connect. Thanks.
See you soon.
Shervin
