As one of our Product Launch Hazzards experts, Paul D’ Souza, founder of Chief Revenue Officer as Service will be helping you product launchers design the right go-to-market strategy with his comprehensive knowledge gathered through years of practical experience in logistics, sales and operations. One of his most notable clients was the Pebble Watch company that started in KickStarter through two campaigns, and grew to ship over 2 Million units to more than 150 countries. He currently works at SourceSelect, a 3PL that helps early-stage product companies move their products from their manufacturers, to their warehouse facilities, to their customers, and back to the warehouse if there are returns. Paul offers free consulting sessions on how to plan logistics and order fulfillment before launching campaigns. You can get access to his expert profile and send in your questions.
Watch the Episode Here:
Listen to the podcast here:
—
This is our chance to meet Paul D’Souza. Paul is a logistic sales and operations expert. When we talk about the launch process, this stuff you don’t want to leave until the end. You actually want to plan for it from the beginning. Paul is instrumental in helping you understand that planning process, not just the tactic side of it but the strategy side of it. Let’s get into it with Paul and dive into all of his experience. Paul, thanks so much for joining us as an expert on the Product Launch Hazards platform.
Thank you. This was so much fun. First, congratulations. I love what you’re doing. It’s such a needed resource because talk to people every day is what I do.
There’s so much they don’t know
We tell them, “Please come early.” I also mentor so many incubators helping product the company founders think about the strategy of getting your product to the market. Congratulations. I love what you’re doing. I’m happy to be on the show. Let’s make this happen.
You wear a lot of hats. Let’s start with the hat of the logistics side of it. Source Select is the name of your company. It is that side of warehousing, distribution, logistics, how you’re going to get it to the consumer. Talk a little bit about how that side of the business works.
It’s very important for the founders, the people, the CEOs that you’ve got a product idea. It’s got to be made somewhere. Once the product is made, you’ve got the next problem of moving that product from the manufacturer, 900 attendants somewhere in China or Indonesia. These are all the sources I’m pulling product from, Israel, Canada, whatever, and you’re bringing into the United States or wherever we need to warehouse it. We stop there. All the way from the manufacturer, I don’t care where the manufacturer is on the planet, my guys will go pick it up, box it if necessary within a container, coordinate all that, all the origination documents, shipping documents, custom documents, moving it through customs at the port, at the destination, stocking it into the warehouse, warehousing it. You’ve got to unload the containers and all that. We warehouse it and then work with you and your Kickstarter, the backup kits and CSE filed, your shopper filed, your Amazon, WooCommerce, whatever the platform, wherever you’re selling the product. We have multiple entry points where orders come from. We process all those are different orders, even the onesie, twosie emails, and then pick and pack product and then ship out to wherever the customer is in 180 countries.
[Tweet “It’s very important for the founders, the people, the CEOs that you’ve got a product idea.”]That’s pretty comprehensive.
I can manage all the returns because X percentage will be returned for various reasons. Most buyers or what have you, situations like that, people move, lost addresses, and then you’ve got to manage your B-Stock because that’s real money.
Some people on here, never heard that term before. I’m so glad you said that because sometimes I’m afraid of introducing vocabulary too soon, but it’s important because we’ve done quite a few little episodes on cost and the complexity, and B-Stock is one of them, but we never defined that. Define that for our listeners.
We had a client where Amazon sent back 2,700 units of their product. Some were untouched, some were on Best Buy and all these big-boxes that were doing product. They don’t necessarily handle them and put them neatly. Customers don’t need to put them back in a box. We’ll just get literally an open box containing a pallet; open, not even close. That’s valuable product that you spend your hard-earned money creating for resale, for sales. What we do is we go and meticulously look at them and treat them like your babies and figure out can this be salvaged? Is it damaged? Is a battery missing? Put a battery and do some repairs if necessary. Sometimes we keep a stock of new pack and when it’s good to go back, we then complete the product, put it as finished stock, and then maintain it as a B-Stock, second stock. When you have other returns that people want to exchange, we send them the B-Stock exchanges, not brand-new product.
Many of us may be very used to this when we get our phones. Sometimes they are refurb phones. Whenever you get some promo phone, they’re pulling from their B-Stock, which means the package was opened at some point, but it’s probably perfectly fine.
We test it for them. We do that functional testing. Sometimes we’re updating firmware so that even the B-Stocks are in sync on the software updates with the latest product and things like that. We do those extra services touching the boxes because very often our customers are not the customer that’s buying the product. The product company owners are sitting in Germany or India or Israel and they have no presence in the US, and we manage all that for them.
Product launchers, this is a good problem to have in a way because if you’ve got 2,700 return, hopefully it’s because you had a ton sold.
Usually it’s 2%, 3%. You have to plan for that.
It’s so valuable to hear those things. These are things that you should plan from the beginning. That ties into your other hat that you wear, which is Chief Revenue Officer as a service, which is an interesting idea because at the end of the day, we’re here to make money on our products. We’re here to make money on our brands. It isn’t just we need a CFO, a financial officer. We wanted to have something to do with sales and making money. I like that term. How did that come about?
It’s the first book I wrote titled The Market Has Changed: Have You? is all about sales strategies. Now that I’ve been mentoring so many product companies and I’ve been working with Source Select and I’ve got into the fulfillment space, the logistic space, I realize that revenue is the result of many things coming together. You have then the nugget of profit that comes even after that. It’s not about sales, it’s about profit, and revenue is a better indicator. What I’m cautioning people and teaching people and advocating is that when you think of your revenue team, it’s actually a multidisciplinary team. Your marketing people, your salespeople, and your product design engineers, they’re getting back to the customer. What does version two look like? Even version one should’ve been collaboratively designed with your customers, not with your customers in mind but with your customers. Big difference. Then your solution, your product delivery, your sales support, and customer support, all that impacts revenue.
Sales Strategy: The Market Has Changed: Have You?: Sales Strategies that Work
Many companies find themselves not just making sales but not making profit because they didn’t look at it from a bigger picture of all those things.
If you look at it just as marketing and sales, you’ll go for the transaction of the first sale. Then the salesperson will assume they’re done. The marketing person is going to assume they got enough MQLs that converted to SQLs that became sales. That is an incomplete perspective. That’s a selfish irreverent perspective. The company has to think about revenue and then profit. When you find your revenue, you get your profit. The marketing people should be marketing to and creating the right MQLs and the write SQLs so they convert. An MQL is a marketing qualified lead where based on the campaigns you do, you get conversions and say, “This is really a nice offer. I’m interested.” That will be an MQL and they opt in for an offer. Then they go to the next thing and they qualify and they actually are interested in making a purchase, they would be considered an SQL.
That’s sales qualified lead.
A salesperson is qualifying them. The person is calling back and saying, “You did this, you did that, or what have you.”
If it’s a little more passive, it might be in an email program.
Email program or whatever, but now they’re getting closer to a transaction and then they’re in. When a salesperson accepts the lead and starts saying, “They’re close. They qualify. They want to make a purchase within 90 days or what have you,” that becomes a sales qualified lead. That becomes a sales accepted lead actually, that’s another level. Then you go through the funnel until they become a customer. What I’m interested in is not that. That is table stakes. You have to do that. The CRO as a service idea came about when I got to twenty years I’ve been doing this and I’ve been trying to tell people, “Break the walls down. I’m interested in sale number four and five and nineteen and twenty from the same customer.”
It’s hard to get a new lead but people leave so much money on the table by not minding the clients they already have and the customers they already have.
It takes a lot of reverence and respect of who your customer is to get to the second and the third and the fourth. It’s not just about giving another fancy discount. Discounts are not your friend. They’re taking away from the bottom line.
Speaking of discounts, a lot of people think of Kickstarter rewards is the cheapest price you’re ever going to buy. You and Source Select, you do a lot of work with Kickstarter and that startup stage. We have a lot of differing opinions on this platform about when Kickstarters are appropriate and when it’s not. Assuming that it’s appropriate and you’re going into it and you’ve got a good plan and a marketing program and the whole thing that’s going to support you though, there are so many things about those rewards and the delivery of those rewards that just trip those Kickstarter up because they didn’t plan the dollars right and they didn’t plan for all the costs that go into that.
Let me explain. Thank you for bringing that up. Seriously, I care about this. I’ll tell you why. Our best customers come to us before they launch on Kickstarter because logistics and all the money associated with getting, moving a product direct and indirect, direct being the freight, the warehousing fees and the picking and packing fees, the indirect being the customs duty, the value added taxes that differ from country to country. That’s real money. I have a client with an upset customer in Canada because they didn’t listen to us. We shipped the product and the Kickstarter company did not inform the customer of all the duties and taxes that Canada has. They have a very complex different tax system.
Yes, they do. I’ve had to deal with that before.
[Tweet “It’s very difficult to make a backer an evangelist if they get upset when they received their product.”]You have the value added tax. We can prevent a lot of that and tell them in advance which country. Based on the country, we can give you the accurate for countries that are stable. For Europe and Canada and stuff like that, we can give you preemptively so you can tell the customers if you’re buying from the Netherlands it’s going to be XYZ. I think it’s 8%. Germany is 23%. You have to collect the money up front or you have to tell them, “When you go pick up your product or FedEx, you have to pay the 8%,” but you can give them the number up front. It’s all about managing customer experience. What I do is I want my Kickstarter companies who start with us to get our quotes before they go on a campaign. It’s actually very costly for me. I spend a lot of time educating them early stage. They use our quote and my consulting. We offer the free consulting service as a pricing strategy.
You do spend a lot of time and some of them never launch.
It’s important for them to do it right upfront so there are no surprises because again, I care that they sell many units and then their backers then buy product for their friends. All backers should become evangelists. It’s very difficult to make a backer an evangelist if they get upset when they received their product and they have to pay another 40% or 30% or whatever.
Sometimes it costs so much more than the product itself.
It was in Canada exactly. The product was $2.50 and they paid $1.40 in fees and taxes and brokerage and things for one product. For us, it’s too late if you come. We can help you with moving forward, but my point is use what we give you early upfront so you create the right pricing strategy so you can convert these leads and deals, if you have, increase sales and have a good customer experience.
Kickstarter are renowned for being late. If you wait until the end to figure out who you’re going to work with to do this delivery stuff, then you’re going to be surprised by all those costs. This is what I have seen happen. They go shopping around thinking they’ll do better, wasting more time, and they don’t do better because it’s not a cost that has anything to do with which warehouse you’re choosing, it’s duties.
My worst story is a gentleman that called us at the last minute. He had an e-bike with the lithium batteries. Lithium batteries are a big problem shipping across the world now. I live with this every day. We know how to do this. We know how to coach them, but he came to us at the last minute and he didn’t realize he was $150 off on the real cost to move a product. He was losing $150 just on shipping for a product. That was fifteen, twenty points because his back was $900 to $1,300. We lost the deal because I can’t fix that problem. He wanted me to eat that money and I won’t. That should’ve been upfront and you should have addressed those real costs in your pricing strategy before you went for the launch to set the right customer experience. What are the true costs of your goods? It’s not just what the factory gives you, but it’s all these other shipping and packaging and all these other fees that you may not think of, but we do and we can help you do that.
This is why you’re here. You’re here to tap into this knowledge of having done this. I was trying to look at the numbers. You did Pebble watch which is pretty popular and if you know anything about Kickstarter, if you explored things. We could have a whole episode on what we think about pebble watch because they made a whole bunch of mistakes that’s in and of itself, but that was like 2 million units or something like that. That’s a huge amount to have learned over and had a lot of experience and understanding. When you have that critical mass of shipments, then you start to understand what that means.
That is one of our true value assets. That’s why we’ve had customers that have stayed with us for twelve years. Swivl started on Kickstarter as well. They’ve been with us for six years. We started small. We started with Pebble with one campaign and then another campaign. The second campaign was 80,000 units or something like that. Then it was multiple countries, and so we then open up facilities in Europe, in Hong Kong, in Australia, and in Canada. To be frank and honest about it, we learned through Pebble. We are actually getting their large complex, 150-country order list and we built a system that would automatically disperse the product. We would send that file to the manufacturer and they would package them according to the orders. We would drop ship from China to all our five locations across the world.
That’s a good point that you have that capability to work with a manufacturer. For some people, this is what I found. I’ve been talking with a few brands that are on the platform here and they were like, “Our biggest problem is UK and Australia and some of these other countries that we’re doing.” I said, “Tell me a little bit about why.” They were like, “It’s all coming into our warehouse in the US.” I went, “Stop right there. Why are you bringing it from China to the US and not going directly there?”
That’s exactly what we do. I’m processing orders, cleaning up. We do the processing of the orders here in the US because we have our account managers here and our customer service team here. Then we’re sending the new CSE files and we’re activating the different locations across the world. The product is going directly. We’re doing freight orders at night with Hong Kong and stuff and our freight forwarders and we are moving product directly from Shenzhen or wherever, to Europe, to Australia, to Hong Kong, to Canada. It’s not coming to the US so we’re getting tremendous savings in bulk shipment and then doing the last mile from the local country.
It’s so important because these factors all impact that profitability at the end of the day when you start talking extra touching and extra time.
Also, it’s very difficult. The lady that I’m signing up right now, she’s out at Bali and I’ve got to pick up product from Bali, Indonesia. She knows her product and she said, “Paul, I’ve been so frustrated trying to learn about freight.” I’m like, “You will never learn what we have developed after 21 years in the business.” I said, “Don’t do it.”
There’s also a difference though because it has changed over the years.
Sales Strategy: The customs now is getting very smart.
It’s constantly changing. With Trump coming into power right now and all of this threat on terrorists, that is a threat, but what he’s done, which is a huge shift, first time in twenty years, our brokers said they’ve not experienced this before. The customs now are getting very smart. They’re putting the pressure on the broker to make sure the duties are declared on the right value, on the retail value. Everybody’s been skirting around using false numbers and false HTS codes and things like that, organization code status and the wrong product codes. They want to reduce that percentage based on the law. That pressure is now on the brokers, just like the CPA is going to be held accountable when they process your taxes to make sure you bring the right taxes. The customs have switched that way.
That’s an area that has been very sneaky and those systems, we’re skirting it. There was a profitability discrepancy.
Not anymore. That impacts your cash flow. That impacts the cost of goods. That impacts your retail value. That impacts your bottom line. We’re here to help you make those decisions. We’re doing that coaching.
There is so much that you can be coaching people on. The other thing that I wanted to talk about is that is that people think, “It’s just a bunch of boxes in my garage, it will be fine.” It’s so not fine. The complexities of it keep you from doing the stuff you need to be doing in your business that could be growing that brand. If you are wearing hats and something that you are constantly learning and having to keep up on all the standard changes and all the document changes and all the things that are going on, that’s going to become in and of itself a full-time job for you and growing your brand will not be. That is not a sustainable business proposition.
Also finding the right vendor. I’ve got so many stories. I have another company. To that point, I chose not to work with the company because they were still offering the Kickstarter campaign. They only got 250 orders. He said, “I can do it from my basement and my garage in Alabama.” Wait, he was there. “Go ahead and do that.” The other company, on the other hand, had a lot of orders, went with somebody else because they gave them a very flat fee. “We don’t want to charge you for storage because you’re coming from Kickstarter. The parts are going to come in the parts are going to go. I want to give you a flat dollar $50 pick and pack fee.” Cheaper than me all day long, “but we can’t handle returns. We don’t know how to create the labels. We don’t have the relationship with FedEx and UPS to manage that effectively. We don’t have the relationships to be able to change an order on the flight when it leaves my warehouse.” I can change the destination of FedEx on the fly before it hits the customer because they moved at the end of the summer vacation house.
If you don’t know this, this stuff happens. Figuring out where your packages are going to be going when you started your campaign is one thing, but all sorts of stuff and people don’t respond.
People move, they lose jobs, they get divorced, things happen and suddenly an address is no longer valid.
This is a long-term delivery system on Kickstarter.
Expect 10% or is X% of your orders, not a big number but it adds up if you’re successful, but literally we are calling. We process orders the first two hours of a day. The rest of the hours, my customer service is processing orders on the fly.
You’re making me remember that I have not responded to an email on a Kickstarter that I backed quite a while ago. I still have not gotten my flip flops that come from this. It’s a great 3D printed flip flop company called We Are Wearables and I forgot to respond to this email. The problem was, in their case, and it’s a consumer problem, they didn’t work with their consumers on this, is I don’t have an iPhone. I have an Android and their app doesn’t work on my phone. I have to go borrow somebody else’s phone, download their app, measure my foot and give it to them in order to get my shoes. This is a problem and this is why I guarantee you they have three times the number of lack of response. It’s not something to do with them not having a great product, but it’s the hassle for me to process the order and give them what I need.
You’ve got to find the right vendor if you’re growing. I’ve got a client who’s coming to me because they have a lot of returns. Their first 3PL seemed easy and very cost effective but cannot handle the complexity of managing your orders and keeping your customers happy. Also, they don’t do international. The company is going to go scramble or we want to go to Europe. How do we go find a 3PL in Europe?
[Tweet “Logistics and fulfillment is way more than just the shipping rate.”]This is something that is good to point out to people. We’re here to build a big brand. That’s why you’re here, that’s why you’re on this platform. You’re here to build a bigger brand, so just cutting corners to start. Look, I’m all for doing lots of market proof testing and doing all of these things at the beginning, but not being realistic about what those costs are going to be, pricing them in properly, understanding them and having the right resources that can grow and handle the complexities as you grow, that’s actually a strategy for more profitability later. It’s going to cost you a little bit more now when you don’t have as many orders, but it’s still relative to how much you ship and how much you make it.
It’s always relevant. There’s no extra fee because I only charge you for what I do. I say logistics and fulfillment is way more than just the shipping rate. DHL and FedEx, they’ve got some cool, if you’ve got enough volume, one price for global ship for fulfillment. By the way, you can’t call and change orders on the fly. They’re not going to manage returns for you. They’re not going to do any warehousing. They’re not going to do any kitting. They’re not going to do any product testing. There’s so much more than just the shipping.
Straight off, this is a problem ongoing, being unable to go into your box and fix something. I have seen it happen time and time again from the biggest brands in the world. I have seen companies have to send a sales force and reps across the country into Staples stores to undo the boxes, open them up, and fix something, add a part, close it back up, tape it back up in the stores. Big brands make these mistakes too. To think that you’re not going to come across these problems, you’re kidding yourself, especially when you’re new to this process. There are going to be issues. We wanted to test a product and you can’t ship the battery across China. You can’t go from one location in China to the other, you have to truck it. You have to have somebody drive it for you. You can’t do that. We couldn’t even test the product with the battery that was going to get shipped with it. We had to test it with our own battery.
What about packaging? Same thing. I recently had a client that started with the packaging that we told them would be a problem. A high percentage got damaged in shipping. FedEx wouldn’t cover the cost because they’re not packaged properly. Now we’ve got a different company in China to make better boxes with foams on the corners and then we truck them. It was a big box. It was 3 x 2 x 3 or so and eighteen pounds. We set a new manufacturer, we truck the boxes and the foams from one factory, a product from another factory in China, to a warehouse in Hong Kong, hired day labor in Hong Kong and repackage in the new packing. We did this from here, from the Silicon Valley. The company owners are sitting in India. The customers are in Europe. We processed it in China because we have a facility in Hong Kong.
It’s so critical. You can anticipate issues and the problems that you’re going to have. If you have people who have lots of deep experience, lots of things that have gone wrong before, lots of launch landmines, we talk about the hazards of product launching, they have all of these things going on and understand that. They’ve come to that background information. They’re going to be your fastest path to getting launched, to being successful with that launch. That critical path that’s necessary saves your money at the end of the day.
Please don’t build too much product until it’s tested by the customer.
You are speaking to the client because is my number one.
There was a company, one of the few early companies that have the electronic doors with the buttons you can manage on your phone and locking the door and open your door with your iPhone and stuff like that. They built 10,000 products. The first 2,000 came in, we shipped the first 200 out. We’ve got about 150 back. We had to hire electricians over here to open the box and redo the circuitry and stuff with that and update the firmware and electronics. We did that and then five other bugs were created. Long story short, we processed 2,500 of these units here and put them back in the market and saved that first batch. The shipping of the second part of the rest of the 10,000, they did the rest of there. The first 2,500 that left China of the 10,000 that were ordered, when we have to do that over here, there’s too much time to ship it back and forth. We built such a good reputation of doing that for people, fixing the product. In fact, now we’ve got a headset company that sells$750 headset, a brain stimulator. We’re actually doing some kitting and work for them here. China is sending to us to do the fine work then we’re sending back to China then they put in the end product.
Sales Strategy: Don’t build too much product until it’s tested by the customer.
Sometimes, especially when you’re doing something early on, like we have a couple of things, we call them hybrid products when they’re like that where we might be putting in a 3D print component into something. Doing that here is still a little easier and a little more control over that, and then we ship that3D print product over to China to incorporate into whatever else that might be going with them. A good example of this as we’ve been doing these 3D print perfume bottles. There’s an actual glass bottle which you can’t 3D printed glass inside, but the outside of it is 3D printed, so it’s in a form and a shape, then you can order a custom topper. If you want your mom’s initials on it for Mother’s Day, you could have bought it that way or whatever that might be. It has a topper that comes with it, but it’s generic. Then you would switch it out. You get to order it and it comes with a card on how to order that.
It’s super easy, but in order to do it, it was like we could have brought the glass product here and put the 3D printed product and assembled them here. Instead, because 3D print items are so light, it’s easier for us to airfreight them there right to the factory, have them do it, have put it safely in the box, have it be ready to go. It went direct to a store because this was an in-store test. That’s another option for you to be able to test your product if you have custom components and standard components you want to combine together, contact Paul because this is such a great solution and there aren’t a lot of places that allow you to do that. Sometimes when we’re starting up a product line, these are the things we have to do because we can’t pay for expensive tooling and we shouldn’t. We shouldn’t be buying 10,000 pieces until we know the customer wants it.
I’ve got a Kickstarter company right now that we had a conversation. The first 200 he’s sending us, and then there’s 2,000 after the feedback, and then 10,000 after that. We’re doing it right. Even the 200, we’re airlifting 100 here and 100 to Europe. We’re going to do two markets simultaneously. He didn’t even allow people from Latin America and Africa yet because shipping there and customs is a nightmare. He said, “Let’s fine tune. Let’s make enough money from the markets that are stable and then we’ll go to markets that are not so stable.” It’s all about business.
This is the perfect opportunity, Product Launchers, for you to use the entire platform here with all of the experts that you have access to and work in a collaborative way. Imagine what you can do if you have your package designer working with Paul to make sure that everything is packaged properly, going to meet all the standards and going to work. If you have your products in factories and sourcing side of it, working with Paul to be able to make sure that stuff is going to be able to go the fastest path and most direct path to consumers or to the countries or whatever that might be. Your marketing people to be able to work with Paul and his team to be able to decide how you’re going to price your rewards when you do your Kickstarter campaign.
There are so many aspects here that you could be collaborating with multiple experts together, and you and your team with each of our experts, especially with Paul, because the cost factor is very large on the logistics and all that shipping, delivering, handling. All of these things are very large portion of it and just thinking that, “I’ve got my cost of goods. I’m good to go,” is so wrong. I can tell you that from every company, every product I’ve worked on in every category, that is never the case. Sometimes the best we do is double our cost of goods. That’s the best we can do and that’s a lot of money when you think about it. I love to get it down. My goal was always to see if I can get my logistics costs to be a third of my cost of goods. It’s nice if you can, but that’s hard sometimes depending on the product. It’s hard, but I like to try to do that because then I know that I have a lot of room to play. If things happen, if you get surprised in certain countries, you have room to play with that.
This lady from Bali suddenly realized she’s got 20%of retail cost for customs and duties that’s going to add on top of it. Usually the customer pays for it, but some of it she’s got to pay for itself. What does that number look like? That’s a real number. Even my shipping then, until we’ve got to the stage where we said, “By the way, have you considered cash flow?” When you move product to Europe, you have to pay that 20%, 21% for the entire shipment in advance before the customer gets it as soon as it hits the warehouse. That’s a business cashflow issue.
Business cashflow issue and budget planning because so often this is what we see happen. Part of why a lot of Kickstarter start faltering is that they didn’t plan for enough money so then they don’t have enough cash flow to do all the product development and all the things that they need, and then support those upfront fees that they have to pay on that. They didn’t plan that properly. Planning it and pricing your products once you have all the information is so critical.
[Tweet “Tell the story to your customers.”]That’s one of my taglines. It’s a pricing strategy. I help you make logistics and order fulfillment and quoting as a pricing strategy.
It should be. I am so excited for you guys to have access to Paul every month on the platform here. There are going to be lots of many little links in this blog post because Paul has given you offers to for his consult, ways to contact him about how to figure out your Kickstarter pricing. All of that is in the blog post that accompanies this video, but also in his expert profile. At any time, I want to remind you, that expert profiles have links to all of our experts exactly how to get in touch with them, reach them, and contact them directly. You’re not going through us, you’re going straight to them, which is giving you an all-in-one place on the platform. Don’t forget to use it. That’s what it’s there for.
This has been great. I love what you’re doing. I wish you and everybody on your network all the best because I have huge respect for the founders, the CEOs, the people that are starting a product. Make it personal. One of my taglines is all business is personal, your customers, and your evangelist customers that you’ll be signing at the early stage, they will care about why you’re doing it. That’s part of the narrative story to sell. Tell the story to your customers. Contact us, we’re here to help you.
Tune in to Paul’s next Office Hours. Connect with and find out more about Paul in our Experts Directory.
Important Links:
- Paul D’Souza
- Source Select
- The Market Has Changed: Have You?
- Pebble
- Swivl
- Kickstarter
- We Are Wearables
About Paul D’Souza
Paul is an expert in business strategy, organization structure and revenue generation. He has played several leadership roles in organizations from Channel and Partner Management to Vice President of Sales and Marketing as well as that of CEO. Paul has more than 18 years of experience in Revenue Generation across several verticals. His career has included selling multi-million dollar IT software and services projects in the pharmaceutical, financial and manufacturing industries, as well as being a go-to executive that has helped businesses in various industries grow as much as sixty percent in 18 months. Paul also serves on the advisory boards of multiple companies.
