

Ask HN: What's the hardest part of doing biz dev to generate direct sales? - ahmadss

Would love to hear thoughts from HNers who hack AND sell.<p>For those who had to jump in on the sales/biz dev efforts at your startup, what are the biggest challenges you face?<p>Is it lead generation? Is it identifying the decision maker and figuring out how to get in front of them? Is it closing deals?
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tstegart
I find it the first two. Identifying prospects and finding who to contact.
Especially when we don't yet have a mentor. I think if we had a mentor who
knew the right people, how the industry works and what works, it would be
invaluable. Building something was the easy part for us (well, not easy) but
making a profit is the hard part.

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ahmadss
so in the case of ONP (I assume this is the business you're referring to), is
the challenge for you is finding folks who'll buy ad space in your magazine?

where are you currently getting leads from right now?

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tstegart
ONB, yeah, the challenge is finding advertisers. The smaller companies often
have no contact information, and the larger companies mostly use ad agencies.
So then you have to find who is representing whom, and then additionally find
a way to reach the media buyers within that agency. We haven't fully launched
our effort, but we're planning on getting leads through our contacts in the
advertising agency market, through our app itself (which will invite people to
advertise) and through cold calling smaller companies (or cold emailing in
this day and age). We're also putting together a press kit to encourage media
buyers at agencies to try us out. To a car company or a major advertiser, the
prices we'll be charging will be tiny compared to a tv media buy.

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debacle
Timing.

You need to know when you're selling yourself, and you need to know when
you're selling your product. You can't sell your product until you sell
yourself; if you try to, especially in B2B and smaller markets, you might lose
your sale.

