This document provides marketing and selling advice from the author's startup experience. It discusses that marketing is about storytelling to create an emotional connection. Marketing efforts must be continual and planning is important. Word of mouth is the most powerful marketing. Selling involves converting potential customers through compelling pitches and closing sales. The appendix provides additional resources on topics like trust-based selling, marketing simulations, and dismantling sales machines.

1. PART 6 – Marketing, Selling
things that
I learned
from my
startup
experience
Suhas Dutta

2. “
“
Robert Louis Stevenson

3. So far…
• In the previous part of this series, we went through funding and
investment solicitation.
Idea
Starting
Executing
Funding
Marketing
Selling
People
Emotions
Learning
Results
• Whether its for your product, or to get investment you will need to
spend serious effort and brain power in marketing your product and
selling. That is what will be covered in this sixth part of the series.
• I don’t intend covering “how to sell” in these slides. You will find
plenty material all over which would cover that.

4. In my experience, marketing is about…
• Marketing is really about story
telling, and it overlaps to a
large extent with selling.
• Story telling is about creating
an emotional connect over a
period of time and love for the
brand.
– That is how companies are able to
sell their logo merchandise.
• Ask yourself again – do you
have a compelling story about
your product or service?
• Ask yourself again – how well
do you know your customer?

5. Marketing is a continual effort
•
Your
efforts
towards
marketing have to be
continual and maintain at
least a minimum level.
•
The focus of the effort
through
a
particular
medium or a product
feature
can
vary.
Marketing type / language
should vary if you are
targeting a wide spread
demographic.
•
Have
seen
and
experienced, that during
cash crunch marketing
spend gets chopped. Bad
thing to do.

6. Field of dreams. © Aaron Dryden

7. Plan for marketing
•
You will need to plan
marketing, and go per plan.
•
The plan will help figure how much
you need to spend, what you
expect to get for that spend.
•
There will be times when you will
need to be flexible and change
plans too.
•
As
mentioned
earlier
your
marketing strategy has to be all
encompassing, and work in an
integrated fashion across media.
•
But you can choose to spend
more in certain areas than others
depending on what the target
demographic of your product /
service is.
for

8. Advertising
Advertising, besides through social
media can also be:
•
On web related media
– Direct advertisements e.g. google ads
– Surrogate advertising by paid
publications on popular websites
•
On print
– Regular advertisements
– Paid press releases, interviews and
features. All magazines, trade
periodicals and newspapers do this.
•
Radio / FM – not very costly, but has
decent reach
•
Television – of course, costs a lot and
will be unaffordable unless you get
plenty funding.
Works well.

9. The most powerful marketing tool
• Word of mouth is perhaps
the most powerful of all
marketing mechanisms.
• Word of mouth spreads
on the basis of your
delivery to customers.
One failed delivery can
ruin a lot of previous hard
work and success.
• Needs a lot of hard /
smart work to achieve
this, but has no real direct
cost in a way.

10. Social marketing is great, but…
• Though
necessary, clearly not
sufficient
for
your
marketing efforts.
• Advertising of all kinds
will be required and so
will be some press
coverage from time to
time in electronic and
other traditional media.
• And word of mouth
marketing still is the
most credible.

12. Making yourself visible
•
Find a way to be visible:
–
Network through industry groups, without overdoing it.
–
Try to get public speaking slots even in smaller conclaves, industry groups, conferences.
Most of these events are visited by potential investors and clients.
–
If you have large amount of experience in a relevant area, check if you can be a mentor-onpanel somewhere
–
If you can get your writing published, do so
–
The corollary to that is, you will need to polish up your public speaking and writing skills.
•
Get some press coverage if you can manage to, either on traditional or
electronic media. Newspaper coverage, of course, has the widest reach.
•
Little bit of advertising in conclaves, conferences, meet ups etc. does go a
distance because of the focused audience and doesn’t cost much.

13. Glamour and glitz?
• Glitz and glamour has its place in marketing and it
does cause brand recall for sure.
• If you have the funding, use it effectively to your
advantage.
• Getting funding from celebrities does help in
marketing too. E.g. yatra.com (Salman Khan), justdial (Amitabh
Bachchan), ubqool.com (Juhi Mehta)

14. In my experience, selling is…
• Selling, usually preceded by
marketing
is
all
about
converting the story that you
narrated
while
doing
marketing.
• No one cares how many ads
you run, but did you make an
impression? Did you capture
the customer’s imagination
and manage to relate it to your
product / story?
• It really is about whether you
managed to get a share of the
wallet of your customer, or not.

15. 30 second sales pitch
•
Know exactly where to go – and it is okay to communicate the end result to
the person you are pitching to, upfront.
•
Prepare, prepare and prepare:
–
Bullet point it inside your head, so that you remain on your prepared pitch and don’t stray too
much.
–
Tell them a story – have mentioned this a few times already. But a long winded story doesn’t
help. Time yourself while preparing.
–
Run the sales pitch with your friends and colleagues and ask for feedback.
•
Eliminate jargon – in the last three years, while selling a software based
service to schools , I learned quickly to stray away from tech jargon and
focus on the benefits and the service. Not many will catch your jargon
anyways, and some people get turned off by jargon too.
•
Ensure that your pitch engages and invites conversation and participation. A
bored potential customer most likely won’t convert.
While preparing this slide, I found some material on businessinsider.in which rang all true from my experiences, and I repurposed
to some extent. These basics worked for us, especially because I have never been a direct salesperson before.

16. While selling
•
Identify your customers well. If
you are creating a pipeline,
there is no point chasing
potentials which will surely not
convert. Qualify your leads
and keep funneling.
•
Don’t let the sales be all the
responsibility of sales people
(if you have any). Get on the
road, meet real customers.
•
You need to be bi-polar in a
way. While you aggressively
sell, you need to be very
aware of the deficiencies in
your product. Your being
critical of the product will help
improve it.
•
Be gung-ho about the product but be
honest to the customer.

17. If you have a sales person / team
•
Ensure that the sales person /team
–
–
Is able to do a demo (if appropriate) on her own
–
•
Understands the product / service that they are to
sell, very well.
Creates and runs the relationship and ensures
delivery (of the product / service)
Make them accountable
–
–
To report their efforts, visits etc every day or
every other day
–
•
For not just sales, but collection and recoveries
To be on the road for most of their time, but
report into office either every evening or at
frequent intervals.
Sit with them
–
For weekly face to face reporting
–
And go through the pipeline, and help qualify
leads

18. Closing a sale
•
Understand that you should be
involved in closing sales – in the
beginning and for every possible
large sale later.
•
Create some sense of urgency by
using a carrot (discount, promo
offer or the like). Keep some cards
up your sleeve which you can
reveal at this time.
•
In some cases the fear of
competition helps too – that if the
person across the desk doesn’t
deal with you, you will deal with
their competitor. Be careful how
you play this though.
Ask for it. It is okay to
tell the client that
you want their
business.

19. Closing a sale
• Understand the client’s sales
process, know the people
involved and set timelines.
• Try not to pull wool, try not to
use tricks. If you are having to
do this, you most likely do not
have a sale, or this will come
back to haunt you later.
• Be prepared to walk away as
well. But stay confident and
positive. Treat the prospective
customer as a customer.
• People say “winners never
quit”. I think winners always
quit, in every field. It is just that
they know when to quit. [isn’t that
what Seth Godin says in The Dip]
Win credibility in
the sales process
and open doors for
repeat business

20. APPENDIX

21. APPENDIX: Useful starting points
• Trust based selling, by Charles H. Green
• HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations Ebook + Video Case Study:
http://hbr.org/product/hbr-guide-to-persuasive-presentations-ebook-video/an/11150V-KND-ENG?referral=01121
• Marketing Simulation: Managing Segments and Customers V2:
http://hbr.org/product/marketing-simulation-managing-segments-andcustome/an/7018HB-HTM-ENG?referral=01121
• Dismantling the Sales Machine: http://hbr.org/product/dismantling-thesales-machine/an/R1311H-PDF-ENG?referral=00929
• How to Sell in 60 Seconds: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/65972

22. APPENDIX: Go to market process
There
could
be
various
other
methodologies, prescribed or subscribed by
various organizations. The basics of the
process are still more or less about the
same.
Implementation
JV / Partner Evaluation
Market Entry
Internal Diagnostics
Market Assessment
Market Diagnostics
Market Dynamics
Metrics
Customer Feedback

23. APPENDIX: How does “SEO” work?
Getting
Found
Search
Engine
Optimization
• SEO does not work
effectively in isolation.
Don’t let digital marketing
companies tell you that.
• You will need to generate
Social
Media
Lead Generation
Getting
Shared
Generating Leads
Idea courtesy: Joe Pulizzi, Content Marketing Institute
– Content through press
releases, blogs etc besides
doing keyword population
for search engines to find
you.
– Interest in your product,
leads
through
combination
advertising, and use
social media.
or
a
of
of

24. • I have shared experiences and lessons that we
learned from marketing and selling our services. I
deliberately did not talk about how to sell, or how
to market because you will find plenty of that
material on that web and in many books which you
can choose to read.
• Go on to the last part of this series which will talk
about people, partnerships etc..

25. • Have questions or feedback? Write to me.
• If you need a little help in terms of mentoring, reviewing
material, vetting a plan or the like…I would be happy to help a
fellow entrepreneur start her/his journey. It will cost you just a
cup of coffee.
• If you have already started and could do with some strategic
advice, helping create your business plans or your investment
pitch, marketing strategy, fulfill your company’s training
needs, need advice on the pitch etc, please feel free to reach
me.
• My coordinates are:
– reach@delhigate.com
– linkedin.com/in/suhasdutta/

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