On Monday, Nov. 27, at the Haas School of Business, in Berkeley, Ca, two amazing woman business leaders presented thought provoking strategies and inspirational experiences on the topic of Sales and Marketing Strategies for early stage businesses. Leading up to the Bplan pitching event in January, The UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition holds a series of Best Practice workshops on key topics facing startups, and Monday evening’s event was the best I have been to over the past two years.

The presenters were Donna Novitsky from Mohr Davidow Ventures and Penny Herscher from firstRain, Inc.

My main takeaways from their talks were:

1) Select your first customers very carefully

2) Treat your first customers really, really well by doing whatever it takes to make your solution work for them

3) Product Development and Market Development are concurrent activities (so important)

4) Talking to customers and doing the sales activities is Job #1 for a CEO in a StartUp

Getting a chance to ask questions and even quickly pitch PromoterForce to Ms. Novitsky after the event was an added bonus. I would highly recommend these free events to entrepreneurs in the Bay Area, it is so important to use the amazing education institutions we have in our backyard to network and grow as leaders.

More good comments about the event over at the BPlan Blog

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Flickr Photo Credit.

The Bay Area was buzzing with entrepreneurial activity this week. In the Internet world, the Web 2.0 Summit is the event to mix and mingle with the chiefs of the top web firms, hottest start ups, leading entrepreneurs and vc’s.

Over the weekend, in the Green World, the green festival took center stage. Fresh off a major election year for solar power and alternative fuels, green is truly the new color of commerce.

Sustainable Solutions

It feels like a great time for entrepreneurs focusing on bringing innovative thinking and action to real problems. Developing sustainable solutions using cheap tools, whether its open source software, or biodiesel has never been more exciting or possible for as many people.

At PromoterForce, we are hugely inspired by the amazing power of smart people with big dreams. We build tools to help these amazing businesses reach their target markets, build upon their relationships with clients, and grow.

The Goal

To commemorate this big weekend in the Bay Area, the team at PromoterForce has set a big goal for ourselves in 2007- Release PromoterForce Referral System beta at Web 2.0 Summit 2007 LaunchPad Event.

In order to achieve this big goal a lot of things are going to have to go our way. Along with all the rest of the entrepreneurs thinking big and dreaming big, we must keep moving towards making the pieces of the dream take shape in the real world.

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A Promoter’s Story, Portland, Oregon, 2006

Jasmine Maya, a Junior Architect from Portland, Oregon, recently joined a pre-natal yoga class to help her prepare her body for labor. She had been attending the classes for two months and loved the workout and camaraderie between fellow moms-to-be.

Jasmine read about a new referral program in the Yoga Studio’s monthly eMail newsletter, offering a fifty dollar credit towards membership fees or a gift certificate to the Puma web store, for each person she referred to the studio. Jasmine had already been telling her friends about how wonderful the studio was and decided to take advantage of the great offer. She followed a link on the newsletter to a webpage that provided all the details of the referral program. Within a few minutes, she had signed up, created a quick profile, and reviewed the easy to use set of tools and tips she could use to spread the word via eMail, blogs, and conversations.

Jasmine sent an email to the Carla, the office manager at work who was also pregnant and had been asking her about the classes. She posted a comment on her college roommate Tina’s MySpace page, Tina had recently moved to Portland and was looking for a good way to meet like-minded new people. Jasmine also printed out a few pages of coupons offering a free session at the studio to post on the activity board in the break room at work.

Both of the friends Jasmine contacted decided to give the studio a try, two people from work used the coupons for a free class, and one of them decided to sign up for a membership. Jasmine’s friends and co-workers were grateful for the recommendation. Later in the month Jasmine received a $50 gift certificate to the Puma store as well as a credit for $100 off her membership fees from the Yoga Studio.

The studio received three new clients at a fraction of the usual marketing cost to acquire them. They also were able to reinforce the positive relationship they had created with Jasmine by rewarding her for the referrals.
A few weeks later Jasmine was having lunch with Kim, the Marketing Director at the firm. Kim was complaining about the high cost of the print advertisements she placed in the local paper, so Jasmine mentioned how the referral program at the Yoga Studio worked and passed along a link with information about PromoterForce in a quick eMail later that day. Kim decided to try out the program and took advantage of a three-month free trial offer in Jasmine’s eMail.

Within a few hours Kim had put together a professional referral campaign, posted information about the program on the firm’s website and sent out an eMail to a select group of clients that responded favorably to their latest Customer Satisfaction survey.

Within two weeks the firm had received six new qualified leads for projects totaling more the $200,000. Without a doubt, the money they spent on rewards and subscription fees was very well spent and Kim received high praise from the CEO at the Marketing meeting later that month. Kim thanked Jasmine profusely, who mentioned that she received a reward from PromoterForce for providing the referral. Nonetheless she was extremely grateful and treated Jasmine to lunch at her favorite café.

The power of PromoterForce is directly related to the high level of satisfaction customers experience with great businesses, the desire to be helpful, and the social relationships in the world we live in.

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