Building Killer Sales Strategies & Teams for Startups

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1. How do the founders wear a "sales" hat & promote their product/service by themselves. Here we address those engineering folks (founders) who feel that they have a unique technology that is patented and almost impossible to reproduce! They feel that people will come in droves to acquire it. But they forget that customers look for technologies/products that resolve their pain points in their respective businesses. We will talk about strategies of how to make this connection as part of their sales pitch,

2. Building a credible sales team with limited resources,

3. Discovering the techniques that work in today's world - Outside sales, Inside sales, Internet-based (SEO, SEM, lead generation, nurturing, etc.)

4. Reviewing other sales and promotional techniques to build a brand and also to attract and recruit funding (investors), co-founders & senior management such as outside sales, inside sales, Internet based (SEO/SEM, social media channels, lead generation, nurturing

5. Any other aspects of sales and marketing efforts including those from audience questions.

Speakers:

Jeff Whatcott is a senior technology executive currently on hiatus. Jeff most recently served as Chief Marketing Officer at Brightcove, a publicly-traded cloud video platform with over 6000 customers in more than 70 countries. Jeff has led product strategy and go-to-market strategy for software businesses ranging from pre-revenue startups to category winners generating hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue at leading companies including Acquia, Adobe, Macromedia, and Allaire.

Jeff is a proven thought leader in digital media technology product strategy and marketing. He is a frequent public speaker and panelist on topics including video content monetization, marketing strategy, content marketing and mobile technology, open source software, and web development technology.

Jeff holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from Brigham Young University and a Master of Business Administration degree from the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University. Fluent in English and Japanese, Jeff has traveled extensively to help grow strong businesses worldwide.

Blake is focused on all things growth at OpenView Venture Partners. He supports the portfolio’s sales and marketing teams to develop demand creation strategies, tactics, and metrics required to fuel rapid growth. In addition to demand creation, Blake consults OpenView’s portfolio on best practices around marketing operations and marketing technology.

Blake joined OpenView from Brightcove where he contributed to the company’s tremendous growth in various marketing and demand generation roles pre- and post-IPO.

Prior to Brightcove, Blake founded Newburyport Pedicab, a community-based bicycle taxi company, which served as a fundraising vehicle to support cancer research charities. Profits from the business were donated to the Pan-Mass Challenge and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.

Jay Singh is the Co-founder & CEO of ViralGains, an advertising technology company. He founded the company with Dan Levin and Kate Willett. ViralGains won MassChallenge 2013, participated in the 500 Startups accelerator, & the TiE Challenge program. ViralGains is backed by $3 million of seed capital from investors in Boston, Chicago, and California. The company serves over 100 customers with 15 in the Fortune 500. The team is now at 25 employees as it approaches its two year anniversary. Dan Levin did our eMinute pitch 2 years back when they were actively raising money.

As Vice President, Director of Sales at Communispace, Jessica oversees sales for the Americas and also manages two of Communispace’s largest clients: Citi and Walmart.

Jessica has more than fifteen years of experience in business development, sales, and sales management in online and traditional media companies. Throughout her career, Jessica has been consistently recognized for developing successful sales organizations, driving strong sales growth and implementing creative strategy.

Most recently, Jessica oversaw advertising sales for Oprah.com and sponsorship sales for The Oprah Winfrey Show. In this role, Jessica was responsible for building the sales infrastructure at Harpo, recruiting top-level sales talent and developing new revenue channels within Harpo. During her tenure at Harpo, Jessica developed long-term partnerships with top brands including Unilever, Kraft, Lowe's, Bank of America, GE, Citibank, and Target as well as established cross-platform relationships with O, The Oprah Magazine and XM Satellite Radio. Throughout each of the five years that Jessica was at Harpo, she oversaw annual double-digit revenue growth.

Prior to working for Harpo, Jessica was the Senior Director of Business Development and Sales at ThirdAge, the leading online media and direct marketing company targeting the baby boomer market. While at ThirdAge, Jessica oversaw the east coast sales team and managed sponsorships and online brand development for Fortune 500 companies including Kraft, IBM, and Merrill Lynch.

Jessica's solid background includes experience as account executive and ad manager at several publishing and PR companies. In each of her previous positions, Jessica has been instrumental in increasing sales and developing creative marketing programs that meet her clients' objectives.

Satish is an accomplished business manager with 20 years engineering and management experience in the IT and Computer Communications fields. The experience includes both national and international arenas in the areas of product marketing, business development and technology based products development.

He was the co-founder of Secure Konnect in 2003, an enterprise security tools company for the SME marketplace. The company developed two products from idea to product in record time that he helped launch in the market here in the US and in APAC with a partner. He also created the brand and early marketing strategy for this company and led the company through its most rapid growth phase; achieving major milestones prior to acquisition by a California based strategic investor in 2005.He has earlier held mid-level management positions in pre-sales and product management at Ascend Communications, Nexabit Networks and Lucent technologies.

Satish is currently a partner in an engineering services company Happiest Minds Technologies headquartered in India, with several offices here in the United States. He is also a co-founder of HealthOMC, a company providing tele-health & other related services through the medical community here in New England & India. He holds an MBA from Rivier University, Nashua, NH and also attended the executive program at the Harvard Business School (HBS), Cambridge, MA.

Co-producer: