fnNYC Scrappy Sales Techniques: Targeted Ways to Get Customers Fast (March 12, 2020)

Due to COVID-19 and recent declaration of a state of emergency, this live event has been converted to a virtual event.

Sales will make or break your company: every company needs customers. Come meet with fnMember Jen Portland as she reveals how to quickly and easily develop your sales pipeline without having a sales department. This will be a workshop where you will walk away with:

• Effective Sales Communication Techniques (from someone who hates to write) where prospects won’t ignore your outreaches, including:
• Continuously evolving your success story
• Wordsmithing
• Properly stay in touch and say thank you
• Networking Effectively for Maximum Impact. How To:
• Ask for Meetings/Intros on the fly
• Pay it forward and DON’T make intros for others …effectively!
• Keeping in touch with former employers (aka your biggest cheerleaders)

Agenda

• 5:45pm - 6:00pm || Settle in, Opening Remarks
• 6:00pm - 6:45pm || Jen Portland: Scrappy Sales Techniques and Q&A
• 6:45pm - 7:45pm || Peer Advisory Roundtable Discussion(s)*
• 7:45pm - 8:00pm || Mingle & Wrap-up

*Our members-only Peer Advisory Roundtables will practice your sales pitch and are designed to go deep on your real-life challenges. Let our diverse community of founders be your resource and support system.

Speaker(s)

Jen Portland is the Founder and CEO of Excel Rain Man, a spreadsheet and data analysis firm with a focus on automation via Visual Basic. They serve a range of clients from rising start-ups to the Fortune 500, including major retailers, financial institutions, hotels, hospitality groups, real estate portfolios, contractors and others. Most recently, they are winning government contracts as Jen pounds the pavement in New York City and New York State showing demos of their work, including Diversity Dashboards of how NYC interacts with MWBE vendors (Excel Rain Man is a WBE-certified business). Jen was recently recognized with two other M/WBEs by the Comptroller of the City of New York for her outstanding contributions to the M/WBE community.

Since starting the company in 2008 as a 1-woman side project, Jen has grown Excel Rain Man into a thriving business with a staff of 20, comprised of top experts from around the globe with backgrounds in engineering, computer programming, mathematics, and finance. Jen’s perseverance and hard work grew Excel Rain Man while fully employed for the first six years. This involved not only recruiting talent and growing a customer base, but also educating others that this type of spreadsheet help and outsourcing exists… thereby allowing others to focus on the more important aspects of their work and not to get bogged down in a spreadsheet.

Guests Are Welcome!

Please bring a guest! Every member can bring one (1) guest to each event. Each guest must be a full-time tech startup founder so they can bring new perspectives, skillsets, and experience to your chapter.

All guests must be full-time tech startup founders and you can register them directly on this function page. See How to Register a Guest here.

fnNYC Regional Leadership Team

- Regional Director: David Plonsky

- Membership Chair: Doug Lessing

- Growth Chair: Terence Finn

- Ecosystem Advisor: Dina Samra

Confidentiality Reminder

All information shared within Founders Network is strictly confidential. We are built on a foundation of trust, and the community takes confidentiality seriously. Investors, members, and staff all share experiences and opinions off the record. In this roundtable forum, we continue to model our fnValues of Reciprocity, Humility, Authenticity and Inclusivity.