Joensuu Entrepreneurs Society held a fun sales event on Saturday evening on October 5th for an audience of around 100 students, entrepreneurs and local established business players.

I was asked to be the ‘warm up’ act, and I am glad I did not have to follow Steli Efti from Elastic Inc, who gave an entertaining and informative presentation on the sales hustle. Bringing some Silicon Valley attitude to our small Finnish city.

What I got out of the event was the motivating energy Steli brings to the entrepreneurs and the persistent and go-getting work attitude. The following week I was at a trade show in Munich and my poor clients got constantly nagged with his tips from the speech, and by the end of the day they were quoting “start strong, finish stronger”, “maybe is not an option”, “never stop following up”, “ring the bell” (commit) etc. You can see this for yourself but be warned Steli; likes to swear a lot and is a trained hypnotist!

The next day Steli and I bumped into each other on a domestic flight and had a beer and a chat in Helsinki at the airport. Nice guy and nice attitude – I suspect we’ll be doing more with Steli and his business ventures such as with close.io through Digital Works Consulting and our Business Acceleration practise in the future.

If you’d like to see my slide deck on Sales – What can we learn from established large, complex multinationals and Bootstrap growth hacking start ups? Check out LinkedIn

I want to make sure I reference Dave McClure, with his established start-up metrics for Pirates: AARRR! for  Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue. I used this heavily in the presentation as it often resonates with clients, and Dave McClure states he is happy for it to be used!

You can view Dave McClure in action on YouTube 

Author: Rob Connell, Director, Business Acceleration at Digital Works Consultancy, rob.connell@digitalworks.com

Clare Carroll
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