15.387 Tech Sales and Management (H2)
Fall 2009
Instructors: Howard Anderson, Bill Aulet
TAs: Carter Dunn, Amanda Peyton
Lecture: TTh 8:30-10:00 AM (BEGINS OCT 26) (E51-345)
Information:
Announcements
From Howard: The Quest for MIT's Next Billion Dollar Idea
The Quest for MIT's Next Billion Dollar IdeaYou are Harrison Ford or Matt Damon and you've been dropped into an alien world. Your mission: Find the Golden Key which will save the comely damsel and/or unlock the next Billion Dollar Idea from the MIT Fortress. You know its hidden behind one of the 1000 doors, each of which is virtually identical. Your time is limited... and evil others are racing you for that exact Golden Key!
What would you do first? Second? That is exactly what we are exploring in an upcoming class at MIT's Sloan School that Bill Aulet and I are teaching. Need help? We've recruited Ric Fulop (A123 Systems), if only because he has actually done it. The Alien World? MIT, and not much is more alien than that. 1000 doors? -That's the 1000 University Professors and their labs. Evil Others? Clearly the venture capitalists (redundant) and the snarly mega corporations.
First? Eliminate as many doors as possible - maybe bypassing the English and Latin Departments. Math? Music? Better not. Remember Akamaii and Guiter Hero.
Second? Pay attention to a huirsite gaggle outside each of these doors. They are the starving, caffein hypped acolytes, sometimes called Graduate Students. (motto"Will Kill for Skittles"). They speak in semi intelligent tongues, if only you can decipher them.
As you frantically sprint down this Infinite Corridor, you are tempted to hire guides, but they speak in riddles. They can't answer direct questions ("which one?") but can tell you about patent applications. When you open a door, you can query the recalcitrants inside, asking which of their neighboring doors are potent. Beware!
They often send you on goose chases - its called "tenure".
Behind each door comes encrypted noise, sometimes called Research Papers, most of which give boredom a whole new meaning. They are read only by the Chosen and their mothers - and only give you a hint about Billion Dollar ideas, they talk about arcane processes
You are tempted to stop and build the ultimate expert system... a supercharged ATM machine which you could feed these formula heavy scientific papers, and, if you got exactly the right one, Billions of dollars would spit out from the bottom ("We have a Winner!). But don't. Its an endless sidetrack and that damsel is starting to worry! Should she have put her faith in the HBS guy who keeps telling her how good its going to be...some day?
Should you go to the exact same door that spilled Billion Dollar ideas before? No! Its too crowded. The VC's are too busy stuffing last year's solution! Build a data base? No again! Maybe look for solutions to The Big Problem.. like curing world hunger or finding a parking space on that MIT lot when there are 10X the number of permits to available spaces.
Aha! Why not build a team of junior Harrison Fords - and send some only to those colored doors where they speak the Tongue... and reassemble at midnight and trade insights. Can you trust your team? Are you sure? Are there spies? Does someone have a solution/key that was built for one door... but opens another?
Sound like a fun class? Ok, alert the Hasbro boys that we have their next Boffo new game and queue Matt Damon that we have the sequal to Good Will Hunting and his next blockbuster!
Announced on 13 December 2009 10:52 p.m. by Carter Dunn
Clarification on Remaining Home Work Assignments
All,
Clarification
Apologies if I wasn't clear this morning about the HW assignments.
In the syllabus, it says you are "required to turn in 5 written assignments over the course of the class." This is an error and should read "6 case assignments"
If you look at the chart on page 5 of the syllabus it will go through and show how the cases are distributed among A and B. Including your first divers delight assignment, you will have completed 6 case assignments. This number obviously excludes the interviews with your reps and managers.
In other words, whoever is the "B" needs to just pick one of the cases for Assignment 12, EITHER Catherine B or Catherine C but NOT both.
Read both Catherine B and C
Regardless of which your team decides to prepare, read both Catherine B and C and be ready for cold calls.
-Carter
Clarification
Apologies if I wasn't clear this morning about the HW assignments.
In the syllabus, it says you are "required to turn in 5 written assignments over the course of the class." This is an error and should read "6 case assignments"
If you look at the chart on page 5 of the syllabus it will go through and show how the cases are distributed among A and B. Including your first divers delight assignment, you will have completed 6 case assignments. This number obviously excludes the interviews with your reps and managers.
In other words, whoever is the "B" needs to just pick one of the cases for Assignment 12, EITHER Catherine B or Catherine C but NOT both.
Read both Catherine B and C
Regardless of which your team decides to prepare, read both Catherine B and C and be ready for cold calls.
-Carter
Announced on 03 December 2009 4:52 p.m. by Carter Dunn
Bring Laptops to Class Tomorrow and Feedback on HW
All,
** Please bring your laptops to class tomorrow and be sure you have a LinkedIn account setup. Dave Gowel of Clearly Creative will take us through how to source leads on LinkedIn.
(I'll be putting HW in your folders tomorrow after class)
** Feedback on Delphi (Assignment 4)
* Profile the person that you are going to be selling to. How old are they? What's their education level? What's their role in the org (ie who do they report to)? What are they responsible for (eg network uptime). This will help you get a clear sense of what their needs are and what objections they have.
* Real numbers are available for pretty much all of the cases. By looking at revenue of a company, online banking presense (# of customers), trading volumes, etc you can get a sense for the $/min that travels over the servers. Is this perfect? No, but it's better than making up numbers or having no numbers at all
* Rather than simply rebutting the objections with guarantees that may be bogus, try to get at the underlying motivation for the objection by asking a question. To "We don't need this/too expensive" try starting with "How many outages have you had in the last 5 years? What was the effect on customer satisfaction, revenue, etc." To "We don't buy Beta SW" ask "What is your biggest concern with buying beta SW?" (not my words, taken from your classmates)
** Feedback on GridPro (Assignment 6)
* Get specific. Grid computing and supercomputers are real and you can get price points by searching on the net for a little bit
* Price and criticality matter because this will drive your sales cycles. If it costs $1-2M you are not going to close in 1, 2, or even 3 meetings. It will take more time and that should be reflected in your 10wk plan.
* Quick research on customers. Regardless of whether you decided to go by region or industry, take a minute to look up these companies. There is a lot of finance in NYC. There is a lot of life sciences in NJ. There is a lot of government in DC. This natural collocation of industries can work to your advantage, allowing to build expertise and a network.
* Look up your competition. This will give you a sense of how you can/should position yourself, price points, etc
** Please bring your laptops to class tomorrow and be sure you have a LinkedIn account setup. Dave Gowel of Clearly Creative will take us through how to source leads on LinkedIn.
(I'll be putting HW in your folders tomorrow after class)
** Feedback on Delphi (Assignment 4)
* Profile the person that you are going to be selling to. How old are they? What's their education level? What's their role in the org (ie who do they report to)? What are they responsible for (eg network uptime). This will help you get a clear sense of what their needs are and what objections they have.
* Real numbers are available for pretty much all of the cases. By looking at revenue of a company, online banking presense (# of customers), trading volumes, etc you can get a sense for the $/min that travels over the servers. Is this perfect? No, but it's better than making up numbers or having no numbers at all
* Rather than simply rebutting the objections with guarantees that may be bogus, try to get at the underlying motivation for the objection by asking a question. To "We don't need this/too expensive" try starting with "How many outages have you had in the last 5 years? What was the effect on customer satisfaction, revenue, etc." To "We don't buy Beta SW" ask "What is your biggest concern with buying beta SW?" (not my words, taken from your classmates)
** Feedback on GridPro (Assignment 6)
* Get specific. Grid computing and supercomputers are real and you can get price points by searching on the net for a little bit
* Price and criticality matter because this will drive your sales cycles. If it costs $1-2M you are not going to close in 1, 2, or even 3 meetings. It will take more time and that should be reflected in your 10wk plan.
* Quick research on customers. Regardless of whether you decided to go by region or industry, take a minute to look up these companies. There is a lot of finance in NYC. There is a lot of life sciences in NJ. There is a lot of government in DC. This natural collocation of industries can work to your advantage, allowing to build expertise and a network.
* Look up your competition. This will give you a sense of how you can/should position yourself, price points, etc
Announced on 16 November 2009 8:33 p.m. by Carter Dunn
[15.387] Pig Flu, Make-Ups, and Next Weeks Assignments
Note: This mail was sent to all participants, guests, instructors, and TAs in the Stellar class 'Tech Sales and Management (H2)'
All,
* Peter Bell from Highland Capital will be teaching both
Tuesday and Thursday next week as Howard and Bill are in
Russia. Bio: http://www.hcp.com/peter_bell
* If you've been sick with the flu, thank you for not
bringing it into Tech Sales. If you emailed us to let us know
you were sick, don't worry about your attendance for those
days.
* Because of the flu, many of you couldn't meet with your
partners to film the videos. To make up the work, just do two
videos from the next section.
* From now on, if you post the videos to youtube, vimeo,
etc please use the following form to submit: http://bit.ly/2zkMYH No need
to resubmit.
* Next week's assignments and class notes have been
posted to help you if you're making up videos.
Announced on 12 November 2009 11:37 p.m. by Carter Dunn
Homework, Interviews, and Dropped Partners
All,
Answers to questions I've been getting:
* No written assignment is required for the Fast Company Reading. But Howard cold calls so be ready.
* Your interview with a salesperson writeup is due this TUESDAY
* When you pick one of the assignments to film, you still have to turn in the video AND the written assignment. Would recommend brainstorming and even drafting the written part first as this will help you with filming the video
* If your partner has dropped the class, email us and we will reassign you.
-Carter
Answers to questions I've been getting:
* No written assignment is required for the Fast Company Reading. But Howard cold calls so be ready.
* Your interview with a salesperson writeup is due this TUESDAY
* When you pick one of the assignments to film, you still have to turn in the video AND the written assignment. Would recommend brainstorming and even drafting the written part first as this will help you with filming the video
* If your partner has dropped the class, email us and we will reassign you.
-Carter
Announced on 07 November 2009 4:32 p.m. by Carter Dunn
