May 1, 2010

Cold Calling the #custdev way, part 2

Michael Schell, author of Buyer-Approved Selling and Winning Sales Advice, developed sales techniques by researching and collaborating with hundreds of professional buyers at Fortune 500 companies.

Following up from my post in part 1 of this series,  Mike gives Lean Startups a few tips for introductions with customer research cold calls.

I'm Salim Virani. I've been designing peer learning programs since 2009, and these days I'm also having fun building random stuff.

In the past, I designed peer learning programs for Oxford, UCL, Techstars, Microsoft Ventures and The Royal Academy Of Engineering. I also played a role in creating the Lean Startup methodology, and the European startup ecosystem. You can read about this here.

What am I up to these days?

I’m working on a communication tool for community groups and unconferences. It focuses on autonomising focused teams rather than top-down coordination.

I’m on the Kernel Stewards team, where we help ~2,000 fellows understand the what the development of blockchains mean to humanity on anthropological scales, and how to use them altruistically and prudently.

Books & collected practices

  • Peer Learning Is - a broad look at peer learning around the world, and how to design peer learning to outperform traditional education
  • Mentor Impact - researched the practices used by the startup mentors that really make a difference
  • DAOistry - practices and mindsets that work in blockchain communities
  • Decision Hacks - early-stage startup decisions distilled
  • Source Institute - skunkworks I founded with open peer learning formats and ops guides, and our internal guide on decentralised teams

Random Projects

  • Cuppa - decentralised collaboration protocol (WIP)
  • Nonfungo - completely on-chain NFT sale notification bot for Discord. (Look ma! No Opensea API!)
  • Powerplays - real-time token launches