4 ms·

I have ZERO CLUE and or social skills to seal the deal with Fortune 500 companies. I am basically a solo founder (have a tech partner, but he's 25% in vs. me 5

I have ZERO CLUE and or social skills to seal the deal with Fortune 500 companies. I am basically a solo founder (have a tech partner, but he's 25% in vs. me 500% in) whose work grabs the attention of the biggest companies in the world. I publish my work on the iNet and or demo it and in doing so VP and higher ups of Fortune 50 to 500 companies reach out wanting to do business and or it could be just flirt and or figure out how my partner and I achieved what we have accomplished. Examples... 1. Two months after announcing our work we were invited out to the valley to demo our tech to an entity out there. They were total jerks to us and baited us to tell them how we accomplished X. That was a low day .. felt like we flew out to the valley to get kick in the stomach by a giant. 2. Fast forward 16 months later and just about every massive tech company has reached out to us showing some level of interest. Not sure how they find out about us (a east coast start-up), but they do and we get excited but then demoralized as nothing happens. 3. Most recently I demoed our tech at a hackathon. After my demo a VP of Fortune 500 company was super excited and said i want to use this at my end of the year board meeting. Ok, awesome let's make this happen I thought. Though first big wig you will need to sign a document and half licensing agreement. Oops that small document that protected us killed the deal and well NOW I AM CRAZY TIRED OF DEALING WITH THESE UPS AND DOWNS. We can and have a history of making cool things, but totally lack the social skills and business acumen. It time to hang things up and possibly open source our work. Many companies bottom lines will hurt once we and if we open source it. Though of course we will remain living our meager lives. Done starting up after 10 years, broke, in debt, 4o years old and family-less (she is tired of waiting for it to happen too.. back to the corporate world so i can have that family ive always wanted).

MichaelGG 12y ago
Unless the "small document" was something ludicrous, it seems highly unlikely that it killed any deal. More likely is that like the other prospects, there was zero true intention, and maybe the document was just an excuse. Or, something about your pitch or follow up is turning people off. Have you sought out some advisors? Just getting meetings with all these companies is a good accomplishment. So perhaps you need s neutral third party to review what you're doing and try to find out where it's going wrong.
sounds 12y ago
I sincerely hope things work out for you. You absolutely will find jerk VPs and bait-and-switch. Patrick's article glosses over that, only briefly mentioning all the times he shot for enterprise and "missed." If you want to talk more (I know nothing about what you did but it sounds interesting and I could possibly get you hired at a bigco), please shoot me an email: large.companies()gmail.com
sskates 12y ago
Sorry to hear that the experience was tough. One thing I'd recommend for anyone new to it- get help from someone who's been an enterprise sales person before. This can speed up the learning curve dramatically. Even then it's not automatic- it took me 6 months of hard full-time work and lots of no's and wasted time like the above to really get a feel for the enterprise sales process. It's more work than learning a new programming language and framework but less work than learning to program.
- ams6110 12y ago
  Another thing to do is try to determine whether you're talking to someone who actually has the authority to make a decision. Givaways are things like "Sounds great, let me run it by my [manager|committee|VP]" etc. You may be thinking you're on the path to a sure sale only to find out that the person holding the purse strings doesn't even know what's going on, or has already made another decision, or there's no budget, etc.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
yourapostasy 12y ago
You simply need time in the field experience with these entities and the managers within them. It is pretty likely you were dealing with mid-level managers at best. VP titles in F500 companies are handed out like candy; most F500 VPs don't have signing authority for more than a few K per month, at most. A good sales person in the situations you described would have worked in qualifying questions into those conversations. How many people reporting to you would also benefit from this solution? Can you work this into your budget now or shall I work with you on justifying it into the next budget cycle? And so on. The primary reason you didn't hear anything back is because these people, if they had any signing authority at all, are used to sales people pushing the deal along, and being the passive partners of the deal, no matter how enthused they were at the beginning. It is normal to see lots of initial excitement, followed by silence to repeated daily/weekly calls/voicemails/emails/letters/gimmicks for weeks/months/year, then a mad rush to purchase in just a week or two. I would go into details of why it generally works this way, but it would make an already too-long reply execrable. Your description of what you were pitching was too vague for me to tell for sure, but the general rule of dealing with those licensing agreements is to get a company counsel to talk with you and express what their concern is that prompts such an agreement/clause, then in a friendly manner suggest alternate wording that protects that specific interest while not infringing upon your interests. Generally speaking, once you are exchanging legal/purchasing/contracts paper, F500 folks cop less "my way or the highway" attitude, and are more willing to meet you halfway if you are reasonable and negotiate friendly-like. Hire an attorney to teach you the wording you want to protect your specific interests if you are unsure of how to make the changes. For some classes of software, you can separate out the R&D to a standalone company, designate yet another company as a retailer/distributor, and sell only licenses through the retailer/distributor. The R&D company will not sell direct, "as policy" (if pressed, just say the R&D team just doesn't want to get into the retail/wholesale side of the business, preferring someone with the appropriate skillset handle that for them). Anyone else who wants to be a retailer/distributor, has to have the appropriate skillset to support the product. It just so happens that only one company in the world so far can do that. As far as the F500 is concerned, you are now a third-party selling and supporting licenses, not the actual product itself. There is an exclusion of the "grab everything we can" clauses in every purchasing contract I've seen for third-party licenses. This is because the F500's realize Microsoft won't sell them Office (for example) if they made a grab for IP via purchasing of licenses. I've said this before, but it bears repeating. Hacker effectiveness follows a power law, and business savvy does as well. You denigrate and ignore the high-effectiveness business people at your peril, as you have found out. Just because the majority of business people are mediocre like the majority of programmers, does not mean you can do without them.

MichaelGG 12y ago

Unless the "small document" was something ludicrous, it seems highly unlikely that it killed any deal. More likely is that like the other prospects, there was zero true intention, and maybe the document was just an excuse. Or, something about your pitch or follow up is turning people off. Have you sought out some advisors? Just getting meetings with all these companies is a good accomplishment. So perhaps you need s neutral third party to review what you're doing and try to find out where it's going wrong.

sounds 12y ago

I sincerely hope things work out for you. You absolutely will find jerk VPs and bait-and-switch. Patrick's article glosses over that, only briefly mentioning all the times he shot for enterprise and "missed." If you want to talk more (I know nothing about what you did but it sounds interesting and I could possibly get you hired at a bigco), please shoot me an email: large.companies()gmail.com

sskates 12y ago

Sorry to hear that the experience was tough. One thing I'd recommend for anyone new to it- get help from someone who's been an enterprise sales person before. This can speed up the learning curve dramatically. Even then it's not automatic- it took me 6 months of hard full-time work and lots of no's and wasted time like the above to really get a feel for the enterprise sales process. It's more work than learning a new programming language and framework but less work than learning to program.

ams6110 12y ago
Another thing to do is try to determine whether you're talking to someone who actually has the authority to make a decision. Givaways are things like "Sounds great, let me run it by my [manager|committee|VP]" etc. You may be thinking you're on the path to a sure sale only to find out that the person holding the purse strings doesn't even know what's going on, or has already made another decision, or there's no budget, etc.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

yourapostasy 12y ago

You simply need time in the field experience with these entities and the managers within them. It is pretty likely you were dealing with mid-level managers at best. VP titles in F500 companies are handed out like candy; most F500 VPs don't have signing authority for more than a few K per month, at most. A good sales person in the situations you described would have worked in qualifying questions into those conversations. How many people reporting to you would also benefit from this solution? Can you work this into your budget now or shall I work with you on justifying it into the next budget cycle? And so on. The primary reason you didn't hear anything back is because these people, if they had any signing authority at all, are used to sales people pushing the deal along, and being the passive partners of the deal, no matter how enthused they were at the beginning. It is normal to see lots of initial excitement, followed by silence to repeated daily/weekly calls/voicemails/emails/letters/gimmicks for weeks/months/year, then a mad rush to purchase in just a week or two. I would go into details of why it generally works this way, but it would make an already too-long reply execrable. Your description of what you were pitching was too vague for me to tell for sure, but the general rule of dealing with those licensing agreements is to get a company counsel to talk with you and express what their concern is that prompts such an agreement/clause, then in a friendly manner suggest alternate wording that protects that specific interest while not infringing upon your interests. Generally speaking, once you are exchanging legal/purchasing/contracts paper, F500 folks cop less "my way or the highway" attitude, and are more willing to meet you halfway if you are reasonable and negotiate friendly-like. Hire an attorney to teach you the wording you want to protect your specific interests if you are unsure of how to make the changes. For some classes of software, you can separate out the R&D to a standalone company, designate yet another company as a retailer/distributor, and sell only licenses through the retailer/distributor. The R&D company will not sell direct, "as policy" (if pressed, just say the R&D team just doesn't want to get into the retail/wholesale side of the business, preferring someone with the appropriate skillset handle that for them). Anyone else who wants to be a retailer/distributor, has to have the appropriate skillset to support the product. It just so happens that only one company in the world so far can do that. As far as the F500 is concerned, you are now a third-party selling and supporting licenses, not the actual product itself. There is an exclusion of the "grab everything we can" clauses in every purchasing contract I've seen for third-party licenses. This is because the F500's realize Microsoft won't sell them Office (for example) if they made a grab for IP via purchasing of licenses. I've said this before, but it bears repeating. Hacker effectiveness follows a power law, and business savvy does as well. You denigrate and ignore the high-effectiveness business people at your peril, as you have found out. Just because the majority of business people are mediocre like the majority of programmers, does not mean you can do without them.