Brace Yourself For Meeting Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan
Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan, a B2B business development strategist and copywriter, specialising in B2B direct response business development strategies for privately held information technology companies that market and sell complex, high-ticket, hard-to-explain products and services.
As a former electronics / computer engineer, engineering manager, project manager and technical buyer[1], Tom has 16 years of experience in the high-tech sector, designing, developing, testing and documenting various hardware and software applications and training their future users. He also served as leader for several project teams.
As a technical buyer, Tom participated in the purchase of some $630 million worth of high-tech products and services, having "digested" over 8,000 pages of proposals and sat through over 1,500 hours of sales presentations.
He saw the good, the bad and the ugly and how buyers respond to them. Since 1982, he's also interviewed over 5,000 business owners and economic buyers about the ins and outs of buying complex, high-ticket and hard-to-explain IT solutions.
Since 1998, he's worked with some 450 privately owned "entrepreneurial" IT businesses all over the globe on a broad range of business development issues, helping them to acquire great clients with sexy, exciting projects.
As a business development strategist, he has written client generating copy for some corporate heavy-hitters, but his real passion and interest lie in smaller, privately held "entrepreneurial" type IT businesses where being fiscally and ethically correct are more important than merely being politically correct and appeasing Wall Street at any cost.
Tom's engineering past makes it possible for him to grasp new technology pretty quickly, effectively translating technical advancements into business value and communicating that value in such a way that draws buyers' attention, raises their interest and loosens their purse strings.
The lessons he learnt in the military enable him to build top-performing business development teams and rally them behind organisational objectives.
His "High Leverage Business Development" approach has helped his clients to achieve...
- As high as 1.54 million in annual revenue per employee.
- As much as 7.3-fold price increase over three years.
- As high as 89% proposal acceptance rate.
Ever since 1998, the beginning of his business development career, Tom has pursued extensive education in all aspects of business development[2] with some of the most recognised experts in their fields. That was a conscious decision for him between getting an MBA by memorising dogmas coming from academic theorists (a.k.a. unionised civil servants) and learning from recognised experts in the trenches of commerce with the intention of generating real revenue.
He has graduated from several of AWAI's (American Writers and Artists Institute) direct response B2B marketing and writing programmes and completed other programmes with other recognised and respected sales and marketing experts.
Tom's is a regular participant in professional copywriting conferences, seminars and workshops, where he has had the opportunity to learn directly from some of the highest respected B2B copywriting experts.
Tom's articles have appeared in various high-tech publications both on- and off-line, and he also publishes his own monthly newsletter, called "Tomicide Solutions" with client acquisition tips for privately held IT companies.
Tom holds a bachelor of engineering degree from the University of Greenwich (London, UK) specialising in computer engineering and microprocessor-based systems.
When not working with his clients, Tom enjoys skydiving, hiking in the local mountains or travelling. He's a digital nomad, spending a significant part of every year in his native Europe, working, hiking and going to concerts.
Some of his time is also dedicated to his joint venture family farms where he serves as a marketing guy and butcher.
That's it in a nutshell really. Now that you know the man behind the pen, well, keyboard, so you now can see what sort of IT writing services he offers.
[1]Based on a 2008 study among industry leaders, by Broderick & Company, the top three criteria companies are looking for in external professionals are 1) "experience in our industry", 2) "expertise in our subject matter" and 3) "Understanding of our business". Continue where you've left off...
[2]The umbrella term of 1) Finding clients; Lead generation; 2) Getting clients: Lead conversion; 3) Keeping clients: Retention; 4) Growing clients: Expansion. Basically, business development is the planned, systematic, measurable and repeatable creation of long-term value for an organisation by virtue of creating distinctive value for its clients. Continue where you've left off...