I’ve always loved connecting with and working with entrepreneurs. If you’re feeling run down and pessimistic, they energize you with their enthusiasm and optimism for what they are trying to bring to the world.
When I got the opportunity to do a 6-month stint at a startup accelerator as Entrepreneur-In-Residence between two of my businesses, I jumped at the chance.
As a sales-focused entrepreneur who has bootstrapped several businesses, the theory was that I could help the (largely technical) founders in the accelerator build their go-to-market strategy and accelerate revenue. In practice, what this looked like was sitting in a conference room a few days a week while a caravan of ambitious founders came in for therapy-esque sessions which largely revolved around fixing their lack of revenue.
After a few weeks, I started to feel a sense of deja vu with each successive sit down and this experience really reinforced the way I think about what makes a start-up or early stage business successful (Hint - it’s not about having the best product…it’s about getting it into the hands of customers and ringing the cash register!)
Here are some of the key lessons I learned:
Most founders can’t articulate a strong value proposition - or how their product solves a problem or opened up a meaningful opportunity for their customer. Most of the founders I met with were so enamored with features, functions and techno-speak that it made my head spin. Solutions sell, not features.
Most founders are eager to talk to anyone who shows even a tiny amount of interest, whether or not they're a good fit for their product. In the absence of defining what an ideal customer looks like for the business, you run the risk of wasting a lot of time and effort on courting bad fit/unprofitable customers.
Most founders have the mindset of Ray Kinsella from Field of Dreams…they believe that ‘if you build it, they will come’. This can’t be further from the truth. Successful businesses not only have a well-defined go-to-market strategy, they also devote time and resources to doing outbound demand generation to create demand for their products from the right prospects.
Most founders believe in a product development process and methodology, but think sales can be done using a freewheeling, shoot-from-the-hip approach. Yes, you may get lucky and close a few deals without a step-by-step sales methodology, but try and scale this approach beyond founder-led sales and you’re asking for trouble.
At the end of my 6-month tenure in the accelerator, I was proud of the impact I was able to have with dozens of businesses. It also refreshed my perspective on how important us sales guys and gals are…not only in these embryo-stage companies, but in businesses of any size trying to make their dent in the world.
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Want to dig in deeper on this?
Check out my new book: The Delusional Founder