On this Keepin’ it 100, Nelson is joined by Kirti Dewan, Vice President of Marketing at Bugsnag, a full stack app stability monitoring solution.
“The takeaway is to just be yourself. I literally wrote the LinkedIn message as though it was a conversation. It's not going to work every single time because people have different circumstances that they need to work with, but it does pay off at some time. People do like to help other people.”
Before her role as Vice President of Marketing for Bugsnag, Kirti served in other marketing leadership roles as a consultant for various companies. Kirti shares the secret sauce to becoming a successful consultant: being authentic and cold calling.
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Kirti is passionate about helping companies build a marketing foundation from scratch or enhance an existing marketing engine. She brings a combination of industry best practices, creativity, and scrappiness to the job through her experiences at large, publicly-traded enterprise companies to early stage and venture-backed startups.
Trinity: Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Keepin’ it 100, helping revenue practitioners better tackle a new role or new project. In this episode, Nelson interviewed Kirti Dewan, VP of Marketing at Bugsnag, which as you may have guessed helps fix software. But Kirti is a veteran of the consulting industry and she understands the difficulty of gaining new clients. But what's the secret sauce? Being your authentic self and not afraid of cold prospecting. Have a listen.
Nelson: I find this whole consulting world really, really cool. You mentioned that one of the greatest difficulties was at the same time that you have to execute. You also have to do some business development and get some clients, and hopefully, you land a client.
That's, that's quite large with the duration of the contract is long enough to keep you entertained and happy so that you don't have to hunt. Right. What advice would you have to someone who was in a similar boat? I was thinking about that. And that's one of their, maybe I guess the biggest thing is, well, how do I get clients? So any, any advice to the audience, some on that, what may be the hardest part about consulting?
Kirti: So there are these consultant networks. And if you become a part of the network and you are able to specify the type of company, the functional area that you like doing work in probably a certain audience that you like catering to more than they go out and they do the BD for you.
And they make these opportunities consulting, gigs available, and then you can apply and they do the matching for you. And then if it works out, that's how you have your next opportunity. So I did about, I can't remember exactly, it's probably two to three consulting projects that way, by being part of these networks, one of my favorite stories from my consulting experience has been that don't give up on cold calling.
It actually works. And I was completely surprised and shocked by when it worked for me. And I couldn't believe it. And that's why to this day, it's one of my favorite stories. So I met someone at a product marketing conference or rather on stage. They said that so-and-so from this company is, has all these job openings.
And doing copy Lauer, you know, go and say hi and have a chat with that person. So when the cocktail hour came about, as you can imagine, there were four rings of people that were surrounding this one person. Right. And, uh, before you know it, the person's already left. So I did have a look at the jobs and I said, Oh, they're all for full-time employee positions.
What can I do here? And just out of a whim, I sent a LinkedIn and I said, Hey, I love what you said on stage. I loved your talk. I grabbed their whole of your cocktails, but you are just totally surrounded. And I know all your jobs are full-time jobs. I cannot apply to any of them because I'm currently consulting and in consulting for these reasons.
However, if you need help in any of these areas, I'm more than happy to have a Jack. And I got a response and I had a meeting and it just went from there. So always very grateful to the person who gave me a chance and do the fact that you know, he responded and he was just so open-minded about it. And I think that the takeaway from there is to just be yourself.
Just be authentic. You know, I literally wrote the LinkedIn message as though it was a conversation like UNR is speaking. And that is what it was. Hey, here are the facts, but I would, I would love to help out if you have something I would love to chat in. If you don't have something right now, but something down the road, if we could just, you know, form a connection, if not, and you think you have any referrals, that will be great.
But if you don't even have that, that's totally fine. So just plain speak, totally genuine and sincere. And it's not going to work every single dime, right. Because people have different circumstances as well that they need to work with it and the parameters within their own jobs and companies. But I feel that it does pay off at some time. People do like to help others.
Trinity: Do you have a note of encouragement or insight to share? Email me and we'll get you on the show at podcast@usergems.com. Thanks for listening.
