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Entrepreneurs get sermon about urgency of sales

Bob Dutkowsky got some advice on selling from his former boss at EMC Corp., co-founder Rick Egan.

"He said, ‘Selling is like shaving – if you don’t do it every day, pretty soon you start to look like a bum,’ " said Dutkowsky, chief executive officer of Denver-based J.D. Edwards & Co.

By Janet Forgrieve, Rocky Mountain News

Dutkowsky was part of a panel at Wednesday’s Startup Basecamp in Denver, aimed at helping startups figure out the best sales strategies.

Successful entrepreneurs and executives are always selling, no matter how big their companies get, Dutkowsky said.

The sales strategy starts as a series of questions entrepreneurs need to ask themselves, said Janet Ryan, a principal at Boulder-based consulting firm Ryan Whiteman.

She told the 250 attendees to ask themselves: "What is the role of marketing and what is the role of sales and how do they work together?"

One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make when they’re ready to hand off some selling responsibility to an employee is not providing enough marketing information.

They wind up hiring salespeople with proven track records and then set them up to fail by basically expecting them to cold-call from the phone book, she said.

Marketing information is vital to identifying likely buyers, and marketing folks are often the best ones to provide sales leads, she said.

Another panel focused on the marketing process from start to finish.

Clark Driftmier, president of marketing firm Boulder Strategy Group, stressed that the place to start when designing a marketing plan is with the company’s mission statement.

Designing a short, succinct statement on the company’s reason for being, then devising a marketing plan around it, is the simplest and most effective way to explain to potential customers why they need your product or service, he said.

Driftmier also cautioned entrepreneurs that once the mission statement is put in place, they must set an example with their behavior.

"Management risks alienation or cynicism if their behavior is in conflict with the mission statement," he said. "Marketing not linked to the mission can seem frivolous to customers."

Wednesday’s Basecamp was the fourth since founders Jon Nordmark, CEO of online retailer eBags.com, and Joyce Colson of law firm Colson Quinn started the program.

The pair came up with the idea over coffee, as they compared notes on the flood of calls for help they were getting from would-be tech entrepreneurs.

Both their companies have since put on the events, with the help of Denver and corporate sponsors.

This year’s event changed with the economy to include topics and advice aimed not just at tech startups but at a broad range of product and service companies.

Panels earlier in the day focused on finding funding sources and budgeting for startups.

forgrievej@RockyMountain News.com or (303) 892-5191

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/business/article/0,1299,DRMN_4_1484215,00.html

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