David Cummings on Startups

Blog

  • Entrepreneurs Should Hire a Sales Assistant Sooner than Expected

    Early on in the B2B startup adventure, the majority on an entrepreneur’s time is tasked with finding product / market fit through customer discovery and sales. While cold calling and emailing (see Predictable Revenue) isn’t a high priority on most people’s to do list, it works for getting in front of prospects and gathering information. Because it’s so valuable, entrepreneurs should hire a sales assistant sooner than expected as it helps the entrepreneur make better use of his or her time.

    Here are a few reasons why hiring a sales assistant makes sense for an entrepreneur:

    • Building lists of companies, names, emails, and phone numbers is time consuming and easily delegated (see the SalesLoft Prospector tools)
    • Coordinating meetings, web demos, and conference calls takes more time than people expect (see Calendly)
    • Staying top-of-mind with personalized, relevant email is a key way to continue dialogue with leads, and a sales assistant can handle most of the heavy lifting

    Yes, a sales assistant will cost $15 – $20/hour, but it’s well worth it if the startup can afford it. When budgets and future hires are being discussed, consider a sales assistant.

    What else? What are your thoughts on the idea that entrepreneurs should hire a sales assistant sooner than expected?

  • 3 Future Trends for Marketing Automation

    During the Q & A session of my talk today at Drupal Camp Atlanta, one of the audience members asked the question, “where do you see marketing automation going?” Thinking about it for a second, I answered that I saw several trends on the horizon for marketing automation.

    Here are three future trends for marketing automation:

    • Benchmarking – With vendors like Pardot signing up a critical mass of customers, there’s an opportunity to benchmark results anonymously across different categories and become the Nielson Ratings of B2B marketers (e.g. for companies of this industry, size, and price point, here’s the average sales cycle, conversion rates, ROI, etc).
    • Big Data / Machine Learning – Most lead scoring is done with a very static model of assigning values to certain web pages, forms, activities, etc. such that it doesn’t take into account actual data from previous prospects that turned into customers. Using big data tools and machine learning, marketing automation systems will be able to automatically build scores around a prospect’s propensity to buy that will be much more accurate.
    • 3rd Generation Platforms – With Eloqua being a first generation platform and Pardot being a second generation platform, in the next few years a strong 3rd generation platform will emerge that’s simpler and cheaper, just like Mailchimp did to the email marketing space.

    So, there you have it: three future trends for marketing automation. Marketing automation as an industry is still only getting started with less than a 10% adoption in the market. These three future trends are the natural evolution of the market and we’ll see them within three years, if not sooner.

    What else? What your thoughts and these three ideas and what are some other future trends you see for marketing automation?

  • Thinking About the Intersection of Content Management and Marketing Automation

    Tomorrow I’m honored to speak at Drupalcamp Atlanta about the Pardot story. Drupal, best known as an open source content management system, is now used as a full blown platform for building dynamic websites. Before I co-founded Pardot, I founded Hannon Hill, a content management company and spent many years in the industry. So, then, where does the Pardot story and marketing automation fit in with content management?

    Here are a few thoughts on the intersection of content management and marketing automation:

    • More and more sites, especially sites that are brochureware, incorporate marketing functions like anonymous visitor tracking, contact us forms, trackable site search, and more
    • As sites collect additional data on visitors through custom or turn key modules (e.g. social sign-on systems), more information is available to do targeted lead nurturing
    • For a non-transactional site, it’s difficult to prove return on investment, but by adding marketing automation, it’s easy to show value

    In the near future, the majority of sites will have some form of marketing automation and it’ll be commonplace for content management systems and marketing automation systems to have a much tighter integration.

    What else? What are some other thoughts on the intersection of content management and marketing automation?

  • Pulse of the People Person

    Recently I was talking with an entrepreneur about a key team member of his. This individual wasn’t on the executive team but he was referred to as “the best person in the company to gauge the pulse and morale of the company” and he would tell him when things were off. I thought about it for a second and said yes, I know exactly what he means. Having a pulse of the people person is critical, especially if it doesn’t come to you naturally (I don’t have that skill, personally).

    Here are a few reasons why it’s important to have a pulse of the people person on your team:

    • No matter how hard you try, certain issues and challenges aren’t going to be explicitly stated and must be inferred
    • Some people are inherently good at “feeling” how others are doing and can sense issues without trying
    • As a startup grows, it becomes more difficult to keep a pulse on the team, making a pulse of the people person even more important

    It’s hard to interview for a pulse of the people person but it’s easy to recognize when you have one on your team, and they’re a tremendous asset.

    What else? What are your thoughts on pulse of the people persons?

  • 5 Steps to Startup Success in 30 Words

    Earlier today I was talking to a student about entrepreneurship. Naturally, he was very focused on the traditional model of identifying a problem, writing a business plan, building a product, and finally talking to customers. I told him that everything he was doing was backwards except for identifying a problem. After the conversation, I thought to myself that there had to be a concise way to describe the necessary steps for startup success.

    Here are the five steps to startup success in 30 words:

    1. Find a problem in a big market.
    2. Line up customers willing to buy it.
    3. Build a great team and culture.
    4. Build a great product.
    5. Build a repeatable customer acquisition process.

    In 30 simple words we have five actionable steps in order of priority. While there are many more details, this provides a great outline for entrepreneurs to follow.

    What else? What are your thoughts on these five steps and 30 words for startup success?

  • Shutting Down a Startup

    A few weeks ago I was talking to an entrepreneur who was out of money and deciding what to do. I asked if he was going to shut it down completely or let it live on like many of the zombie startups out there. He decided to shut it down completely so that he could move on and have a fresh start.

    Here are a few thoughts on shutting down a startup:

    • Make a conscious decision to fully shut it down or to let it limp along without any attention — regardless, make a decision
    • Talk with a lawyer to go through the necessary legal steps to dissolve the legal entity and any other legal requirements
    • Reach out to customers, investors, advisors, etc and explain the decision as well as rationale
    • Connect with friends, colleagues, and peers and share with them lessons learned (very cathartic)

    Shutting down a startup is never easy as there’s so much time, energy, and effort in the journey. Take it one step at a time and properly lay it to rest.

    What else? What are some other ideas around shutting down a startup?

  • Getting Involved in the Atlanta Startup Community

    On a regular basis I talk to someone that wants to be an entrepreneur or wants to help entrepreneurs. I like to ask what steps they’ve taken to make that happen and there usually isn’t as much concrete progress as I would hope. My response is always the same: get involved with the startup community and begin participating. There are so many good resources, places, and programs now that it’s super easy to get involved.

    Here are a few ways to get involved with the Atlanta startup community:

    With so many events, it actually becomes easy to attend too many events and not make enough progress on your startup. Find the right balance with respect to getting involved but most importantly just start.

    What else? What are some other ways to get involved with the Atlanta startup community?

  • The “What Do You Do” Question

    Over the years I’ve struggled with providing a consistent answer to the “what do you do” question that gets asked at social events. It’s not that I don’t know what I do (although some people question me on that), it’s more so how do I present it in a manner that’s both interesting and relevant.

    For many years, I simply said that I was the co-founder of a software company. The most common response to that was the following question: do you work out of your house? Naturally, I’d answer that question and start thinking about how I answer the first question in a way that doesn’t lead to that second question. My new standard answer was the following: I’m the CEO of a software company with X number of employees in Buckhead. Providing more context in the response made for better conversations.

    When “what do you do” question comes up I still provide the same response and also add that I’m helping a great group of people build the largest tech entrepreneurship center in the Southeast.

    What else? What are your thoughts on the “what do you do” question?

  • Matching Brand Promise and Reality

    Last week I met an entrepreneur working on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product where one of his main value propositions was product ease of use. The market is cluttered with a number of vendors, mostly a decade old, that have a distinctly web 1.0 feel. The entrepreneur sees an opportunity to be better, faster, and cheaper with a focus on ease of use. Only, after seeing his investor slide deck and current website, it screams complicated and not easy to use.

    Brand messaging and reality need to match up.

    Looking at it from an investor perspective, the entrepreneur immediately lost credibility as things didn’t match. My advice is to hire a professional designer, either through a crowdsourced design site like 99designs and crowdSPRING, or hire a local like Two Way Dialogue or Nebo Agency.

    Make sure the presentation and product match the brand promise.

    What else? What are your thoughts on disconnects between brand promise and reality?

  • Time is Precious — What’s your hourly rate?

    Recently I was talking to a successful entrepreneur and we got to discussing the precious nature of time. Once the business or entrepreneur has all the financial resources needed, time becomes even more valuable. On the individual front, there are always requests for time-related things: coffees, lunches, panels, events, conferences, etc. It’s easy to set up a personal schedule with tons of meetings and not accomplish anything.

    Now, when thinking about time as a precious resource, the logical way to quantify it is to determine your hourly rate. A great hourly rate estimate for time is as follows:

    Take your annual compensation for last year (e.g. $100k), divide it by two and drop the thousands, and the result is your hourly rate (e.g. a $100,000/year would be $50 per hour).

    So, the next time someone asks for an hour of time and you’re unsure about the value, think about the hourly rate and where best that time is spent.

    What else? What are your thoughts on time being precious and the hourly rate as part of the opportunity cost?