I don’t like sales, just like probably 90% of everyone else here. Also I’ve never been inspired by anything as much as blockchain and the knowledge I’ve received. I think I have a long way to go but if I could inspire anyone to buy something this would be it.
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@filip Hi, I could really feel that at some point of your career you really had a bad time is SALES, I have worked for 10 years now in technical sales at Huawei and know it can be quite painful!! I just wanted to say that I’m available to see how we could improve this section of the course, any time!!!
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Hey Filip - I actually got the opportunity to sell Oracle’s blockchain as a serve solution (built on Hyperledger Fabric) when I worked there a few years ago (left in 2019). My impression of that experience in a nutshell:
- There was a ton of interest from partner companies like Accenture, Tech Mahindra, Deloitte
- There was a little interest from companies, primarily in the supply chain space for coffee beans or clothing (due to California’s strict anti-child labor laws)
- Oracle had built a fairly robust BaaS solution that they offered to sell, practically at cost
- Very little sales happened at that time. I do think this was because the tech was so new and corporate adoption is slow…but this taught me that educating companies on blockchain still has a ways to go before we hit mainstream enterprise adoption.
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Hi Filip,
I have extensive formal training and life experiences in selling internally and externally. I was fortunate enough at a younger age to have a “mentor” in this area and a company that formally trained me in the art of selling. Most people mistaken the art of selling with selling used cars and nothing against selling used cars because people need used cars too. I was trained with Xerox (PSS) professional selling skills course and public speaking by Dale Carnegie, I recommend and endorse these courses and people.
Like programming software, selling is an art form and uses methodologies to create relationships that work for the greater good. Everyone is selling at all times whether they realize it or not, its in our human DNA.
There are many strategies to selling but the one that has worked for me and is genuinely real is as follows. Imagine yourself building a house of cards. The lower layer of the cards is always “TRUST” the second layer is “COMMUNICATIONS” and the final and third layer is “PEOPLE SKILLS” and “TECHNICAL SKILLS”. In my experiences in life is to always build on
on these pillars, we may not always succeed because we are all different and human and we make mistakes but that’s OK too.
This is how we learn in life.
Best
Max
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The use case for permission management is HUGE in the business applications of blockchain. First we need to take a step back from the crypto space, because number one, they ae permissionless. Secondly we need to remember that businesses are all about processes and approvals. Enormous inefficiencies can and do occur is all types and sized of businesses, and this is largely due to inefficient communication between different parties or departments or levels of responsibility within a business. In business, time IS money.
I think it is vital also to remember that just because a business implements blockchain doesn’t mean its a blockchain business, nor does it mean that blockchain is integrated in all parts of their business.
The main takeaway is to deeply consider all aspects of a business or industry and figure out WHICH PARTS can be positively affected by implementing blockchain solutions.
Here is great example that I came u wiht because my friend has a bunch of pin ppoints in the sales process at his tech firm. Basically his company got bought out and they are having to integrate to all the systems and processes of the newer large company.
He and his team sell software as a service (SAAS). The new company also has a bunch of different software. previously he had quite a boit of leeway in negotiations in pricing and terms to push the deals across the finish line. Now he has to folow a bunch of new guidelnes with a lot less flexibility. His close rate is greatly diminished, plus his reps now have to follow a bunch of different new workflow processes that slow them down. This is an ideal case for BC. Reason being is that now all the deals, even standard stuff has to get approved by a team of people in INDIA. Different culture, different, time zone, different communications processes. Also there’s a bunch of issues with how things are DATED throughout the sales process. All of this stuff could be easily automated with a blockchain solution. HOW?
Smart contracts can ease the approval process by instantly notifying both the approver, and the sales team that something needs to be approved, if it got approved, and or why it did not get approved. The speed of this is vastly superior to traditional interoffice communication processes. Secondly, the internal documentation from the sales team into TWO different softwares can be automated with something like baseline protocol with unibright framework. No more time consuming data entry in multiple locations… Also baseline gets everyone on the same page instantaneously and also allows for easy integration of otherwise non-communicative ERP’s to quickly handle these types of issues. Also lets look at the permissions side. Who can tweak deals? what’s the variance of conditions allowed. Who can see what? More importantly, how can we TRACK who did what? This is huge problem with typical business IT infrastructure and the use of multiple servers. it becomes extremely difficult to audit Who did What. If we utilize a blockchain solution with permissions in place and key pairs, suddenly the entire business process becomes highly auditable IN REAL TIME. I hope this helps…
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So there’s the rub! At the end of the day we all have to sell ourselves and also the technology. One note about the passion… I find exuberance and a high level of knowledge can really freak some people out at first. lets just try to open the dialougue about the pain points within the business and think to ourselves about the business model and how BC can improve records management, data security, logistics, communication processes, auditabiity, accounting, workflow processes etc and come up with a plan. I have a tendncy to get really exuberant, but my plan is to adress specific pain points and to pasively work conversations into arenas where i can answer basic questions very easily and then retract to a thought provoking question to which i probably already know the answers
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I work in the compliance and consulting services industry. I wanted to pitch the idea of offering crypto consulting services. What I found to be the most important thing was to get one colleague on my side. I created some slides to outline my idea and the value my company can achieve through this and then simply discussed it with one colleague that is in a senior position and convinced him. Then we two worked on a formal project creating a “prototype” for our services. Then this was introduced to our boss.
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This is huge problem with typical business IT infrastructure and the use of multiple servers. it becomes extremely difficult to audit Who did What. If we utilize a blockchain solution with permissions in place and key pairs, suddenly the entire business process becomes highly auditable IN REAL TIME. I hope this helps…
Ok the multiple data silo issue makes sense to fix with blockchain.
I’m a bit skeptical of some of the other parts. I think the biggest gains here for a consultant are physiological not tech. Getting the old management and new management on the same page going same way. Sales are partly down because in lack of belief in the process. As far as tech combination of Salesforce with some minor Unibright and MS Office modifications should fix this. This should be very quick and low cost. Mostly API calls using Blockchain to remove redundant data and implement signing process.
Random side note:
A great book concerning the leadership implications of this situation. Extreme ownership by Jocko Willink
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Great insight! Thanks for reading and replying. Costs with unibright are an unknown for me. I’m not sure exactly how the integration costs go. I will look for the book! Thanks a lot
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SELLING = LISTENING IN MY OPINION. AND LESS IS MORE. UNDERSTATE AND OVER DELIVER.
YOU HAVE 2 EARS AND ONE MOUTH FOR A REASON. USE THESE ASSETS IN THAT ORDER AND YOU WILL SELL. 
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I think a good way to bring this up in your company is to start asking the higher ups about problems the company is facing, then listen to what they say and ask them for more details about anything they bring up that seems like a blockchain solution is applicable. After opening that dialogue up, I think it would be best to follow the sales funnel given to us in this section.
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I have been selling succesfully ideas inside the corporation and these where there to key things:
- Be confident. They have to see that you are serious and acting what is best for the company.
- Listen and try to understand if people disagree with you. When you listen you are able to notice the points that makes them uncertain about the subject and then you can explain those things in their perspective
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I have been talking to a good friend who is Sales Director in a Spanish mid-sized company (600 people) selling and developing solutions based in AI, IoT and -at the beginning - also blockchain. They were very enthusiastic about what these technologies could deliver and went to many conferences were they met decision makers of major companies. After 2 years the result was that the colleagues of the blockchain department were partly reabsorbed in other departments and partly fired. These decision makers who went to the meetings wanting to improve their companies through “digitalization” at the end did not understand which would be the specific benefits for their companies. All of them were CEOs or other positions at high level. In conversation later on with some of the participants, the general opinion was that these topics are so disruptive that it takes time until the average humans acknowledge and comprehend what is being talked about and translate it to specific benefits within their organizations. Additionally they could not foresee and were afraid of what these changes would mean for themselves. The obvious explanation , according to my friend- was that they sadly were not able to explain the subjects in an easy, schematic and simple way. I personally think that it is not easy: I know my friend is good at explaining to a larger well educated audience, and I know that most of the participants were all smart people with long working experience, but maybe that was one of the problems. To me this topic has 2 main difficulties: a) It is difficult for humans to change completely the way of thinking, and b) humans need a reasonable time to comprehend and assimilate innovative approaches.
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I work at a law firm and wonder if smart contracts would be a good way to handle payments, so that instead of sending invoices, payments would be made when services are fulfilled or when the courts make a decision.
I also wonder about real estate, which Filip mentioned tokenizing. I could see smart contracts working especially well here, between buyer and seller. When certain conditions are met, payments are made. Much like with a traditional sale by owner, interest rates, time frames and other variables could be agreed upon in the contract, allowing everyone to avoid dealing with lenders and to speed up the process. In the case of default, property would be returned to the owner instead of the bank.
Especially now, banks are getting more rigorous with their lending criteria. Even though interest rates are low, many people have trouble getting loans. Smart contracts may allow greater flexibility, especially when tied to over-collateralized tokenized lending.
I am still trying to think of other opportunities in the legal field…
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Hello community,
Out of curiosity, would anyone have a price range for how to factor their packages and present their “blockchain menu” for clients? I’m not entirely sure how that would look like or be structured.
Thanks in advance
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Hey @Dwayne, hope you are well.
I do not understand your question, what do you mean with a price range of a blockchain menu. Maybe if you detail it a little bit more i can help you 
If you have any more questions, please let us know so we can help you! 
Carlos Z.
Hi @thecil
The “menu” analogy wasn’t the best example to use, but to be a bit more specific, how much do we charge a client for our services? I would imagine that it all depends on the overall project, but how do we properly calculate our fees/rate for a client? Do we use places like Upwork as a reference?
Hope that was explained a bit better
Thank you Carlos
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Ok, you mean in terms of price for a service, that of course no way to set it exactly (depends too much in many factors to just post like a global list of price), but you can take job offer prices as reference, maybe you want to check here also: https://cryptojobs.com/
If you have any more questions, please let us know so we can help you!
Carlos Z.
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You Should Check out The Unibright coarse with Baseline protocol using both private and public blockchains to solve these problems, I’m 34 years young and am chaining careers and taking a risk to go full time crypto but I’m ready to do what I love.
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I work @ company where blockchain can be used for traceability (supply chain). So I will start selling the idea to decisionmakers. Let’s see. I will inform you