Start Up on the Right Foot — Build a Customer Advisory Board

If you’re a B2B startup founder, having warm relationships with a crowd of prospective customers is an ideal. But it can also be a reality. In this exclusive interview, Peter Kazanjy shares the steps any startup — no matter how small — can use to build its own, robust Customer Advisory Board. He covers how to recruit members, gather high-quality feedback, keep relationships strong, and … [ Read more ]

Pete Kazanjy

If you can internalize one thing in [the PR] process, it’s that the journalist is your customer. They are busy, overworked, with deadlines, and lots of irrelevant dogshit pitches crufting up their inbox. And they have their own constituencies to please (their readers, their editors). This is why this is B2B sales: you’re selling them on something that is going to make them successful at … [ Read more ]

Pete Kazanjy

Every new staffer’s desk should look like you were waiting for them to get there with bated breath and you’re so glad they’re there now.

Pete Kazanjy

On-site interviews are notoriously time intensive for your whole team. Guard your team’s time against wild goose chases by doing the heavy lifting yourself during the screening process. A candidate shouldn’t be coming on site unless you’re already pretty damn sure they’re a hire. Otherwise, you’re pissing away your people’s time.

To Build An Amazing Sales Team, Start Here First

The first step in building an effective sales strategy creating a persuasive, bulletproof narrative that will grab people’s attention, get them to question existing solutions, and ultimately convince them that not using your product is costing them big. A sales narrative is not to be confused with a sales pitch. Rather, it’s the core story that can be adapted for slide decks and presentations, demos … [ Read more ]

You’re Losing Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars Because of Poor Sales Onboarding

Once you’ve pulled the trigger and hired salespeople you like, your entire focus needs to be on getting them up to speed as fast as you can. Here are actions all B2B startups can take to build not only the most talented sales team, but the best-prepared sales battery possible.

Pitching Practice: Public Relations Launch Checklist for Early Stage Startup Founders

I get a lot of people asking me about PR, and how to achieve coverage, especially around a launch or announcement.

At the end of the day, it’s not a big mystery. It’s a B2B sales campaign, where you have a qualified, relevant list of targets (media list), a means by which to reach them (email addresses), a coherent argument for why what you’re doing is … [ Read more ]

The Anatomy of the Perfect Sales Hiring Process

Pete Kazanjy discusses a recruiting strategy for bringing aboard energized, motivated salespeople who produced, including the mistakes he made and has seen other organizations make, and — most importantly — how to find and close the candidates that will make or break your ability to sell your product.

Building Your Best Sales Deck Starts Here

This article takes a deep dive into one of the most critical things in engaging and acquiring your first customers: Creating presentations that actually work.