A few lessons from this program
How can a startup sell to companies that are infinitely bigger?
That’s one of the lessons I asked Josh Hartwell to teach. Josh bootstrapped GOSUB60, which created Mobile Deluxe, a top 10 mobile game publishing company. He did it by convincing giants like AT&T and Sprint to work with him. Here’s an edited excerpt from the program.
Startups get off the ground between the hours of 10 and 2. That’s 10 PM to 2 AM.
That’s where you’ve done your full day of work–but then you have to hit it again. You have to do the additional research and find out who your target customers are, where they are, and how you can contact them.
And when you hit the dead end, you can’t stop!
That’s one of the things that my wife and co-worker Kelly brought to the table. Since she was already in sales, she knew that you don’t settle for the “no.” You don’t settle for the “Thanks, but we already have a dozen solitaires on our phones. We really aren’t interested in your tiny company.”
Those are the tough relationships to develop. I call those the “99 / 1 relationships.” As opposed to the 50 / 50 relationships.
You have your 50 / 50 relationships where the other party is half invested in the relationship. They’re getting something from the relationship from you.
Then you have your carrier relationships when you’re a tiny startup where they don’t care. It’s the 99 / 1 relationships. They’ve got at least 99 others. And so they care about you, about 1%. They don’t need you.
Those are the ones where you need to use your sales skills, use your diplomacy skills–and, diplomatically, not accept no, and not accept dead ends.
