Focusing on Selling
Most technology companies spend there 'youth' developing some IP and sometimes that's all they ever do. Their novel idea results in something that can be licenced to other companies that focus on exploiting this in the market. However, for many technology companies it is up to them to go out and sell their product or service. This requires a whole new skill set and focus that may not come naturally to the founders of the business. How you get past this growth stage is critical. The ability to demonstrate repeatable sales, significantly increases the chances of raising finance to fund expansion. All too many of the investment propositions we see have left it too late to start selling!
Indeed, many such innovators may believe all they need to do is make it! The reality is that only innovators in your market will seek it out. To really make the numbers stack up someone has got to go out and sell the dam thing to people that really could go either way! So you don't just need a good product, you need a good sales and marketing strategy -- and the people to execute. Get selling as soon as you can! If the objection is that your product needs another bell or whistle don't accept this. Someone, somewhere has to buy into your vision. This validation is key to raising investment. Go and get some ASAP!
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The Biggest Business Myth
One of the great myths about business is:
"Build a superior product, offer a superior service, and provide an elegant solution to difficult problems, and you will be successful."
It is a shame that the best talent, the groundbreaking work, the technical superiority is in the field that is suffering the most with the highest cutbacks, the slimmest of margins and lowest of salaries.
Perhaps it is because (technology) is not a glamorous industry. We don't make the Internet faster, or the seal.. er.. seal better.
We make machines work. We make turkey bags from 11 layers of plastic film so people don't get sick from spoiled food. We make bolts stronger so engines don't fall off airplanes. We make drugs
that cure diseases. And yet we earn some of the lowest salaries.
Consumers drive prices down, which drives costs down, which drive overhead down, which drive salaries and benefits down. Too often this means that some of our smartest and most talented people with key skills and experience developed in the manufacturing industries are spinning the wheels. Truly great ideas are falling through the cracks. I know talented project managers who are now selling carpets. My neighbour used to build sophisticated IR sensing devices - and he is now selling kitchens at B&Q. I’m sure they are very nice people at B&Q but it's not what they want to do, it's not what they should be doing - so why are so many talented people having such a hard time?
Here's why:
What you can do and how good you are does not matter.
What matters is how well you COMMUNICATE what you do and how good you are.
That is the difference. And you know it’s true. you have seen it in your school, college, your work colleagues. Everyone knows the person who has been promoted above their capabilities, who suffer delusions of competence, but they talk a damn good job and know exactly what noises they need to make.
Every year, tens of thousands of people invent, innovate and create brilliant products, terrific solutions to truly perplexing problems - only to find out that it's darn hard to raise money for their new ventures, and even harder to get customers to
listen.
Most of the time those new products and services
die on the slag heap of great ideas that never saw the light of day.
You don't want that to happen to your great idea.
So here's how to make sure it doesn't:
Make sure that marketing, sales, advertising and PR is the foremost priority in your new venture.
Even if you don't like Microsoft (they're not my favourite company either, (I converted to mac several years ago and am still waiting for my first crash)), you MUST learn this lesson from them: They don't have the best software by any stretch of the imagination, but they do have the best sales strategy. And in business, it’s the sales strategy that wins, not the superior technology.
So if you're waking up every morning thinking about the minute details of your cool product or service, please stop and re-calibrate. Understand this:
1) Having a superior product is not necessarily an advantage, and can even be a DISadvantage - because it can distract you from the real objective, which is to GET and KEEP customers.
2) The product you develop is rarely the product your customers want to buy. That's OK as long as you're listening and flexible. But if you've already spent all your money perfecting the product, then you won't have any left to respond to customer
feedback.
3) The product or service itself is, at most, maybe 25% of the equation. Advertising, PR strategies, and real-world market testing (as opposed to "market research", which is usually just "opinion research") --- all of these things are MORE important than the product.
4) Innovate, Don't Invent -- It's much easier to go into an existing market and solve an existing problem witha slightly improved, more interesting product (innovation) than to create a product from scratch that solves a problem people don't realize they have. That's goes along with myprinciple of "enter the conversation inside the customer's
head." Align yourself with your customers so you re talking the same language.
Back to my neighbour selling kitchens—nobody needs to suffer this fate. But don't underestimate the challenge: If you have superior talent, then the best investment you can make is in communicating that talent to the world -- clearly, effectively, and without fail.
The Raindancer 2006
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