BizDev, Marketing and Sales Collaboration

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Hey everyone,

Welcome to our new thread for the BizDev, Marketing, and Sales team collab! :tada:

@jordan, @DouglasDraper, and I just had our first meeting and we’re excited about the potential here. Our main focus is boosting the right leads and improving conversions. Here’s why this collaboration matters:

  • Better Lead Gen: Combining BizDev and Marketing insights will help us reach the right people and generate high-quality leads.
  • Higher Conversions: Sharing feedback between BizDev and Sales will let us tweak our process to close more deals.
  • Aligned Strategy: Merging our strategies makes sure we’re all on the same page and targeting the right audience.
  • Smarter Resource Use: Pooling our resources means less wasted time and more impact.

Next steps:

  • @cassie is working with an external marketing agency to finalize our marketing strategy. I’ll share their report here for review.
  • @jordan will kick off work on a BizDev strategy document for us all to collaborate on.
  • @DouglasDraper will investigate how our leads are allocated to us from Open edX and chat with Eden about it.
  • We’ll meet again in two weeks for a synchronous session, then switch to async meetings. @jordan will share our meeting recording below :point_down:

Feel free to share anything you think could help!

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Thanks for putting this together @cassie!

Here is the recording from today’s meeting:

And here is where the BizDev Strategy doc will live which I’ll be working on this week: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bjhpmKmCQwc2ndrz7SZzd-5AjIBrd0kKDsnO4aloM2c/edit?usp=sharing

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Thanks for the Mktg/BizDev discussion on Monday.
I just learned that Annabel is in a conference on the 26th and she won’t be able to present tomorrow. The tentative plan is for the GTM presentation to happen at the next BizDev WG meeting which I believe is on April 16th.
A meeting invitation is attached.
Doug

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Oh, and one more point, @Fox that you could shed light on. The topic of how leads are allocated to us from Open edX came up in our discussion. Does Axim allocate leads based on the profile/capabilities of partners or is there some other rule governing how they are divvied up (equal number to each partner, etc.)? Might it be possible that Eden send OpenCraft leads from organizations with a profile more aligned with our sweet spot (e.g. our lead prioritization rubric) and fewer leads from clients looking for small, cheap implementations?

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I am not privy to the decision making process for referrals in most cases. We just receive referrals sent over by Eden. We also receive leads from the Open edX website, which don’t have any real pre-screening-- someone just saw our listing and submitted a referral.

It is possible that we could get better referrals from Axim. There is a concern I think might come up, though:

Since our market niche is high-end, heavy-customization projects, this often means prestigious clients. There may be hesitation to refer clients of this nature to us in disproportionate volume to other leads since it could be seen as favoritism.

However there have been occasions, usually with Axim team members writing a personal introduction email, where we get an especially good referral. These projects tend to be ones whose success or failure has big implications for the platform, Axim, and the community at large, and when faced with that choice, Axim is more likely to personally refer them to us. So it is not as though Axim is unwilling to personally refer when it makes sense to. It might just be that Axim doesn’t get a ton of these higher-consequence projects.

In reality, of the last year, I feel like the referrals from Eden have been better than they were the year before. So I suspect Axim has been doing some internal work to better refine the routing of leads. Most of the referrals still aren’t a great fit, but they’re more plausible than they were before. I’ve noticed that most of the time the volume of expected learners is higher or there’s a lot of potential customization work, and I don’t expect Axim to do a detailed qualification round like we do to determine if they’re likely to have the budget or critical business need for it. Or the client speaks French and I think we might be the only team that can do the initial negotiation in French (though even with us, we have to have them move to English for support eventually.)

When referrals were the domain of edX, we did pay them some amount for the referrals. I’m sure we’re plenty willing to pay again if Axim decides they want to start charging for it. The economist in me would welcome this, since it would incentivize quality, best-fit referrals to us (and the other providers!)

However, Axim doesn’t have the same financial needs edX did. They have an endowment that keeps them moving forward. Whatever amount of money referrals would generate for them is probably a drop in the bucket by comparison unless the project is very large. So if they were to do this, probably the best way to set it up would be to earmark referral budgets to something the Axim team would find fun or meaningful to work on but otherwise can’t justify the budget for in the context of their other priorities.

One thing Axim might do is add/tweak some of the questions in their initial referral email. The emails we get from Eden have enough history that we can see the lead has been sent an initial set of questions:

What’s the time frame for your project, when would you like your courses to be live for learners?

How many courses do you intend to launch?

How many learners are you targeting?

These questions assess ambition but not budget. Adding a question about budget might help. The lead can always decide not to answer it, but when they do answer it, it could make it clear whether the person talking about 100,000 learners is talking distant future aspirations at best or if they realistically expect to be handling that volume through proven business need.

Sometimes a lead would be better off doing their proof of concept elsewhere and then moving to us when they get too big for the other provider to handle. Sometimes they want to derisk and future-proof immediately and have the budget to do so. Sometimes they have the budget and the scale to start off swinging for the fences. Sometimes they have unrealistic expectations no team can meet. Getting a sense of budget clarifies things.

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Also, is there a ticket for this?

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@Fox Piacenti Thanks for the thorough and thoughtful take on referrals from Axim. I like your idea of adding a budget question to Axim’s initial referral email.
I think it would make sense for someone on the team to have a quick discussion with Eden about their approach to distributing inbound leads.
I feel like Eden’s a pal but happy if you’d like to do this if you think it’s better (Jordan doesn’t know her yet).
And yes, we need a ticket (was thinking the same). @Cassie Zamparini or @Jordan Saniuk , is there one we can link to?

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@Fox @DouglasDraper We just have the check-in ticket here: Log in - OpenCraft

I can make a new ticket though and schedule the call with Eden (Log in - OpenCraft). I’m also going to make a ticket for the BizDev Strategy doc (Log in - OpenCraft), thanks!

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Thanks for having that discussion! It’s definitely important to improve on those topics, which have been historically outside of the the “comfort zone” of OpenCraft. As you have noted in the meeting, our current approach works wonders when people are in the community and know us well, but it’s pretty challenging when people don’t know our reputation or aren’t being personally recommended. I’m hoping we can change that! It’s not like the rest of the world can’t use high quality services - but we need to be able to pass the message across, and be to demonstrate the value without a personal recommendation (or maybe leverage our recommendations more?).

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Btw, I used a LLM summary to catchup with the meeting, so I am posting it here for anyone else who would be interested, without having to watch the entire meeting:

Meeting Summary: Business Development, Marketing and Sales Alignment

Introduction and Roles Discussion (00:24 - 08:54)

At the beginning of the meeting, Douglas, Jordan, and Cassie engaged in casual conversation about weather and personal topics. Douglas then explained his role at OpenCraft to Jordan, as Jordan was relatively new to the company. Douglas described that he joined OpenCraft at the invitation of Xavier and Gabrielle to help with sales processes and sales training. He mentioned that he had developed a curriculum and worked with Fox to create a sales process that would enable tracking the progression of opportunities. Douglas noted that his background was in working with technology companies, focusing on sales process methodology and business development. He had also been involved with the marketing working group and had helped develop workshops for Open EDX events. Recently, he had been working with Cassie on writing case studies and website copy for OpenCraft.

Alignment Strategy Discussion (08:54 - 12:53)

Cassie explained the purpose of the meeting, stating that historically at OpenCraft, marketing, business development, and sales had operated in silos with little communication between them. She emphasized the need to align strategies to drive leads more effectively. Cassie noted that the company had impressive clients but was “riding on the coattails of that success” and needed to build on that foundation while also highlighting their product capabilities, as many potential clients were unaware of what OpenCraft could do.

Douglas suggested conceptualizing their approach as a continuum rather than separate entities, describing the customer acquisition process from suspect to prospect to lead to opportunity. He explained that the earlier stages of this process fell under marketing’s domain (messaging, branding, category awareness) while later stages aligned more with sales. Douglas suggested that Jordan could help bridge the gap between these disciplines at OpenCraft.

Business Development Plan (12:53 - 17:04)

The team discussed a comment from Xavier about creating a business development document similar to the marketing discovery document that Cassie had already prepared. Jordan confirmed he would work on this document and share it with Fox. Cassie mentioned she was collaborating with an external marketing agency called Noel House in South Africa and would share their suggestions with the team once she had reviewed them. She noted that the agency had indicated OpenCraft’s marketing budget was “way too small” for what they were trying to accomplish.

Customer Acquisition Strategy (17:04 - 23:35)

Douglas highlighted that OpenCraft owed “95% of its success to references,” with institutions like Harvard recommending them to new clients. He noted that business development efforts had historically been “non-effective” and suggested the need to think differently about OpenCraft’s approach to sales and business development, recommending more targeted outreach.

Jordan shared an insight from Fox that when choosing OpenCraft, clients want to know “it works” and have “the best team behind you.” He noted this messaging worked well when clients already knew OpenCraft’s reputation but was more challenging with new leads who lacked that context. Jordan explained that without prior knowledge of OpenCraft’s expertise, the high pricing made the sales process more difficult.

Douglas agreed, adding that many inbound leads were not appropriate for OpenCraft due to their high price point and specialized capabilities, including UI/UX expertise that was a clear differentiator but not needed by all potential clients.

Pricing Considerations (23:35 - 27:41)

Jordan asked about OpenCraft’s hourly rate, particularly from a UX and product design perspective, wondering if it was significantly higher than competitors’ rates. Cassie confirmed it was very high, especially from a South African perspective. She shared an example of Axum, which had provided feedback that OpenCraft’s rate was too high for design work, leading to special arrangements for design projects.

Lead Quality and Distribution (27:41 - 31:06)

The team discussed the quality of leads they received. Jordan mentioned that of the 10 leads he had received and responded to since starting a month ago, only one (Utah State University) was likely a good fit. Douglas suggested it might be beneficial to discuss with Eden (presumably from Open edX) how leads were distributed to partners. He proposed asking Eden to be more selective in the leads sent to OpenCraft, focusing on those that matched their ideal client profile. Jordan agreed to check with Fox about this possibility, noting it could be a minimal-effort way to improve their new business pipeline.

Next Steps and Collaboration Plan (31:06 - 34:07)

The team agreed to create a forum post for their business development, sales, and marketing collaboration efforts. Cassie would take the lead on establishing this forum thread, and Jordan would add the meeting recording. Douglas mentioned an upcoming go-to-market presentation from a consultant on Wednesday that might be valuable for the team to attend.

They decided to meet again in two weeks while asynchronously providing input to Jordan’s business development discovery document. They also discussed dividing attendance at various working group meetings to ensure coverage without duplication of effort, with Cassie noting that she and Ali were already taking this approach with UX/UI and product working groups.

Agreed Next Steps:

  1. Jordan to create a business development discovery document, similar to Cassie’s marketing discovery document
  2. Jordan to check with Fox about the possibility of getting more targeted leads from Eden/Open edX
  3. Cassie to create a forum post for their business development, sales, and marketing collaboration efforts
  4. Cassie to share the Noel House marketing agency document once finalized
  5. Douglas to send information about the upcoming go-to-market presentation
  6. The team to meet again in two weeks to continue discussions
  7. All to provide asynchronous input on documents and ideas between meetings
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[off topic]

This summary is GREAT! Curious, what LLM do you prefer?

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[off topic]

@cassie Lately I have been mostly using Claude, the latest Sonnet 3.7 is really good, especially with the “pre-thinking” enabled. I used to still have to spend a fair amount of time to fix LLMs summaries for working group meetings (or code generation) before, now it’s pretty much ready to copy&paste.

Since the state of the art changes quickly, I generally use LLMs through Kagi, which allow you to pick any of the major LLMs through a dropdown - and since it’s also a (great) search engine, it makes it easy to ask questions to a LLM quickly via the browser search bar using a !bang. Combined with the ability for LLMs to access search results, it has pretty much replaced normal search for me.

[/off topic]

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