21 12 / 2011
WePay Journey - Part 4
After I joined WePay as an unpaid intern and got my first sale in June (see parts 1, 2 & 3 of my WePay journey), Rich and Bill thought it would be a good idea for me to begin cold calling other groups to see if we can acquire users through the phone. At the time, our only tool was “billing” so we thought it would be a perfect fit for all organizations collecting dues.
One of our angel investors, Nils Johnson, came into the office and helped walk me through the basics of cold calling. I made calls in my last job but they were all somewhat warm calls (the person had submitted info and expected someone to call them). It helped a ton and showed me how to open the call, what questions to ask, and to close with a day/time we could walk through the website together. When Nils left, Bill came into the conference room and said “let’s do this” while pointing to the excel spreadsheet of contact info for shriners. Yep, shriners. These guys.
As you can imagine shriners aren’t the most tech savvy group of internet users so we opted for the next best thing - fraternities.
By August 1, I was cold calling about 40 fraternity treasurers a day and “demoing” them by walking them through the product over the phone.
On August 7, I was offered a full-time position at WePay. That same day, I happily signed on the line that was dotted and became the seventh employee and first non-technical hire at WePay; I haven’t looked back since.
