Luciana Reznik, Cedalio & Wolox | Validating and Selling Services to Large Companies

The audio and video are in Spanish. These notes are a translation.

Selling services to large companies is a difficult task for any founder: sharpening your value proposition, landing your first meetings, asking for feedback, setting prices, and managing the sales process…

Our guest, Luciana Reznik, did all of this from the age of 26 as CEO and cofounder of Wolox, a technology services company for large enterprises where she led the commercial expansion from Argentina to the rest of Latin America and the US, and reached 15 million dollars in annual sales with clients such as Visa, Procter & Gamble, PayPal, BBVA, and Falabella.

After almost 10 years, Wolox was acquired by Accenture, a leading global consultancy valued at 200 billion dollars.

We talk about how to differentiate yourself in a sector with gigantic competitors, how to sell to large companies, and how to expand into new countries.

Today Luciana is cofounder and CEO of Cedalio, a startup that lets developers build decentralized applications without needing to be blockchain experts.

Youtube Timestamps*

[1:55] - Intro to Wolox

How did Luciana get into the fascinating world of startups?
Why the name “Wolox”? What does it mean, and where did the inspiration come from?
Luciana tells us about Wolox’s early days, what opportunities they found that motivated them to build a company in a market that was apparently so competitive, and whether they knew the competition was that large.
Did they take projects of every kind? At some point, did they start prioritizing which projects to take and which not to, in order to keep sharpening their value proposition?
What questions should a founder ask a potential customer in order to get valid feedback? What are the wrong questions and the most common mistakes?

[17:25] - Sales to Large Companies

What were the most effective tactics they used to reach, connect with, and meet potential customers?
Luciana tells us an anecdote about a customer with whom it was very hard to get meetings, who was in a country other than Argentina, and how she decided to do something unorthodox to close the sale.
When is the right moment to move from a founder-led sales model to building a team? And how do you think about that delegation so you minimize losing your understanding of the customer?
When is the perfect moment to grow your sales force beyond the founders, and how does she think about making the sales team sell more like a founder would?
The first sales to corporates are usually highly customized, and they often turn into a large expansion. The motivation would be to close the customer at all costs. How important is pricing, and what does Luciana think about maximizing price or profitability?
What tools does she use as a founder and commercial leader to create urgency in a sales process?
She had to lead Wolox’s expansion to the US. What variables should a founder consider in order to define the best moment to expand into another country, especially one as competitive and large as the US?

[44:05] - Go to Market in the US

Luciana tells us how the product should look, its evolution and the criteria, and then what a commercial strategy should be worth when going to the US.
How do you adapt your offering to a new customer in the case of the US, which is like going back to the past?
What would she have liked to prepare differently in order to feel more ready when landing in the American market?
She had to be CEO of Wolox at 26, as her first work experience. What was the hardest thing she faced as such a young founder and CEO, and how did she handle it?
It took her time to learn how to take care of herself personally as CEO. What is she doing differently in her work style and her leadership now that she is building Cedalio, her second company?

[59:42] - Rapid-Fire Questions

If you had to start a company again from scratch, what would be the main piece of advice you would give yourself?
What has been the most influential book on your path through the startup world?
What would you like to change about the startup world in Latin America?