{"id":7680,"date":"2014-03-12T11:54:39","date_gmt":"2014-03-12T16:54:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/?p=7680"},"modified":"2017-05-09T14:29:52","modified_gmt":"2017-05-09T19:29:52","slug":"spark-startup-born","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/spark-startup-born\/","title":{"rendered":"The Spark: A Startup Is Born"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Editors Note &#8211; Cy is a friend of HostGator, currently pursuing entrepreneurial dreams in Silicon Valley. We have asked him to share his adventures.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\n<p>Every once in a while, that elusive flash of inspiration delivers the seed of an idea. \u00a0It seems innocuous at first, but it lives and grows in the back of your mind; you can\u2019t shake it. \u00a0It make take years to come to the fore, but it never fades.\u00a0 For me, that is exactly how <a href=\"http:\/\/getcontastic.com\">Contastic<\/a> became a company. \u00a0What follows is our story.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">From the moment I walked in the door to my first sales job at Microsoft, I knew that sales is a winner-take-all business. \u00a0The top performers close ten times more deals than the average rep. \u00a0\u00a0After spending a bunch of time with the top performers, I still couldn\u2019t quite put my finger on exactly how they were accomplishing such remarkable numbers.\u00a0 Their close rates and techniques seemed just about the same as everyone else; why were their results so spectacular?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>The Epiphany<\/h3>\n<p>My epiphany came when I saw their prospect lists. \u00a0\u00a0The best sales people had massive funnels 10+ times larger than those of everyone else. \u00a0They would progressively farm this list to <em>surface<\/em> deals &#8211; ensuring they stayed in touch with as much of their network as possible.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7695\" alt=\"contastic\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/contastic.png\" width=\"610\" height=\"46\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/contastic.png 610w, https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/contastic-300x22.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 610px) 100vw, 610px\" \/><em><a id=\"docs-internal-guid-6fb0ef49-b723-0d6a-bbcb-3f627082018a\" href=\"http:\/\/www.getcontastic.com\/\">Contastic\u2019s<\/a> dashboard, showing your engagement with your contacts.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I use the word &#8220;surface&#8221; because that truly is the key to great sales. \u00a0It\u2019s all about discovery   not conversion. \u00a0It\u2019s really hard to talk someone into buying anything they don\u2019t already want. \u00a0Instead, it\u2019s more efficient to simply discover who is already looking to buy   and then be in the right place at the right time to sell to them.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">My observations are further backed by research (don&#8217;t take my word for it!). \u00a0The first wake up call comes from Gleanster Research, which published that 50% of leads are qualified but not yet ready to buy. \u00a0This points directly to a need for lead nurturing to stay top of mind with those leads until they\u2019re ready. \u00a0And Forrester drove it home by showing that companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost.\u00a0 The numbers don&#8217;t lie!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Staying in touch: The Hard Way<\/h3>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">This transformed the way I thought about sales, from being an act of persuasion to a feat of engineering. \u00a0It was about designing a process that would efficiently surface and qualify leads through prospecting.\u00a0 I built a massive thousand-row Excel sheet of every person and every customer I had ever met. \u00a0I\u2019d record interactions and, on a quarterly basis, I\u2019d try and reconnect with everyone on the list. \u00a0By the end of my three years I became a top rep.<\/p>\n<p>This was, however, a painful and awkward process. \u00a0I\u2019d have to search for each person\u2019s email to figure out when we last spoke and on what topic.\u00a0 Crafting a personalized email then required several more minutes, and often times I\u2019d simply be sending a no-value-add checking email (&#8220;Hey X, how are things with you?&#8221;). \u00a0For high value contacts, I\u2019d take 20-30 minutes to find an interesting piece of news or research to send them   as a way to (I hoped) at least contribute some value to their life.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Staying In Touch: The Right Way<\/h3>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">I thought   why can\u2019t I give this VIP level of service to all of my contacts? \u00a0Why can\u2019t the lead nurturing process be automated to provide personalized service to every customer and prospect? This idea sat in the back of my head as I was swept into my first startup (cimls.com) where I saw realtors struggle with this exact same problem   staying in touch with current prospects and past clients.\u00a0 I witnessed this every single day in business school as well, students networking with each other and talking with different companies to find jobs. Lost connections and lost opportunities, simply because it was too hard to stay in touch.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">When I graduated in 2013, I knew I had to build this tool to help people stay in touch. \u00a0I moved out to Menlo Park, CA   with nothing more than 5 boxes of my belongings via UPS to pursue my dream of building <a href=\"http:\/\/getcontastic.com\">Contastic<\/a>  a platform to help professionals stay in touch. \u00a0How can one recent grad convince others to join him, build a product, find customers and realize his dream?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: center;\">Stay tuned for the next post: Perilous Pivots &#8211; When A Dream Meets Reality<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\n<div style=\"float: left; padding-right: 5px; padding-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"snappy_cash\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/cy.jpg\" width=\"115\" height=\"150\" \/><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" id=\"docs-internal-guid-6fb0ef49-b713-712d-7e68-b4c46c7baaa2\"><strong>About Cy<\/strong><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: left;\">I\u2019m an engineer who loves to sell. \u00a0\u00a0My career started out in big data engineering for Microsoft evolved into a sales role that landed me as the founder of <a href=\"http:\/\/getcontastic.com\">Contastic<\/a>. \u00a0I bring the hard data-driven approach of an engineer to the softer science of sales. \u00a0It\u2019s always a pleasure for me to meet new people and help them evolve their sales practices. \u00a0You can find me online at cykho.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Editors Note &#8211; Cy is a friend of HostGator, currently pursuing entrepreneurial dreams in Silicon Valley. We have asked him to share his adventures. *** Every once in a while, that elusive flash of inspiration delivers the seed of an idea. \u00a0It seems innocuous at first, but it lives and grows in the back of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-startup-small-business"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Spark: A Startup Is Born - HostGator<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/spark-startup-born\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Spark: A Startup Is Born - HostGator\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Editors Note &#8211; Cy is a friend of HostGator, currently pursuing entrepreneurial dreams in Silicon Valley. 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