Incubator Funds in India: Sales and Business Development?

The idea is good. The product has been spec’ed under strong product marketing discipline. The talented engineering team has delivered Version 1.0.

Now it’s time to sell.

So, how do you sell from India, without burning through ridiculous amounts of capital, without spinning in place?

There are multiple answers to this question. However, one of them, for me, would be to have a TeleWebSales (TWS) team as part of the incubator. If that sounds like gobbledygook to you, then you need to read my discussion with Anneke Seley on TWS methodology.

I am a huge believer in telemarketing, telesales, and search engine/web-based marketing. All of these play to India’s strength of being a powerhouse BPO/call center player. Now, the time has come to apply that phone/web skill and morph to selling via those channels.

In terms of business development (doing larger partnership type deals), again, it would be good to have high-level business development talent in the incubator, since the individual companies would not be able to attract or afford such talent.

I will end this topic with one caveat. Only certain types of products/services can be sold in this mode, and it would be important to ensure that the “idea” is chosen accordingly. There are many businesses that require more direct sales forces or hundreds of millions of dollars in brand advertising. These are probably not the types of businesses I would recommend going after at this stage of the game. (Why? That’s a much longer conversation, but for now, trust me on this guidance.)

This segment is a part in the series : Incubator Funds in India