Walking and talking is my preferred method of communication. I use to wait until I had a call scheduled but now I just go (3-4X a day) and send/listen to audio messages.
Well phone number can always be re attributed to a real user so it’s rare that a deny list is the only indicator used to prevent fraud, at least that’s not how our antispam works at https://ding.live :)
Sales at a startup trying to find product market fit is probably the worst job of all time. You have no marketing/brand/leads and if by some miracle you do land a deal your product probably isn't quite right and there is no customer success to handle the daily demands of an unsatisfied customer. That said, if you want to transition to sales, with 17 years experience (assuming no sales) this is probably your best option. The pay cut is typical, the upside is real, IF you can find product market fit. Sales is not presenting a solution, it's asking questions to find the problem and more importantly finding the person who the problem affects financially the most. It's a lot of fun and a unique skillset. I'd say not closing a single deal last year is a warning sign. I'd evaluate what you would do differently. Be objective and critical about why you will produce different results. Only advice I'd give is what I tell all sales reps, focus on quality daily outbound activity (calls, emails) and everything else will take care of itself.
In my experience, there is no silver bullet outreach. Until you have dozens of customers you shouldn't do anything at scale. Best thing (depending on customer) is call, linkedin inmail and/or emails. It typically takes 3-7 touches before someone will buy from you (no more than twice a week). You just need to patient and provide them value. Remember they have no incentive to look at your solution. Just send them personalized messages knowing they are busy and you're not a priority. I recommend using apollo (to get emails), streak gmail plugin (or hubspot if you have it) so you get email read reciepts. At least you know when someone opens your message. Keep trying different value props until something works across multiple users.
I went through extreme zoom overload as a senior leader at a large organization. I found myself on upwards of 16 Zooms a day. It was exhausting and I felt not very productive. I found most people were multi-tasking and just waiting for their turn to talk. There were also people who just hid on meetings all day every day instead of producing work. I've since switched entirely to async audio messages. You get far more context and discussion than text based chat. Teams/slack already have audio messaging built-in. Why wait until everyone is on a meeting to discuss something. Instead just start talking and people will respond when they can. I've reduced my synchronous meetings to a couple a week. Disclaimer: I built Airwave a push to talk app for frontline workers and use that exclusively.
Hang in there. These 5 months rank among the worst times to get a job in software. Things will pick up in a couple of months. Make sure you're working on an interesting side project
Thanks for your thoughts here - fortunately I've been working on some relatively involved novel development for my friend's startup. Worst case I can just continue contracting and use this to gap fill my resume for a year or so.
I feel ashamed not due to the drop in my salary, but more so because I feel like I'm no longer improving my career. Feels like I'm moving backwards and its embarrassing I'm making less than I did right out of college at Amazon.
Things don't always go up and to the right. Life is not linear. If things aren't going your way professionally, you can always work on your personal life or physical body. You're only moving backwards if you stop moving.
In my experience there are 3 types of justifications for big decisions. The first is data supported, any logical person would come to the same conclusion. The second is data sort of supports it, yes there is a leap, but people can see it and argue whether it's real. Finally there is no real data to support, in this case a founder type needs to convince people it's there but no one sees it yet (it's our secret and we're going to own it). What's worked for me is to have a short (like a day) period where you allow everyone to be heard, then you make the decision and make it clear that if you disagree once the decision is made you commit. Inevitably someone who thinks you're wrong will leave, that's ok. New people bought into the direction is good.
