Author Archives: Tom Ryan

Elementary Startup Planning: Financial Models and the Path to Profitability

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SIBP-Blog-NEW-B-2We’ve all heard the stats about business failure. According to some fairly reliable sources, as many as 8 in 10 businesses will fail within the first 18 months. But that statistic doesn’t tell the whole story. Many of those businesses were doomed to fail long before they ever opened their doors. Why? Their founders had no idea how the business was actually going to make a profit.

In my last post, I stressed just how important the financials are when planning a new business. The better your understanding of your path-to-profitability, the easier it is to both communicate and implement that plan. Continue reading →

Elementary Startup Planning: Why Financials Matter

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SIBP-Blog-NEW-B-5A few weeks ago, I was talking with one of the first-time entrepreneurs I mentor as a Kauffman Foundation Entrepreneur In Residence. As we were working through the details of getting them ready to start their first funding round, they asked me a really great question.

“Tom, if you were starting a new business today, what is the first thing you would do?”

As I started to think about the answer, I found myself getting really excited. Even without having a specific business concept in mind, my mind was flooded with some great ideas for getting a new business off the ground. At the same time, the answer to their question was obvious, because every plan I could come up with was built on the same cornerstone: Getting the financials in order. Continue reading →

Alternatives To A Longform Business Plan

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SIBP-Blog-NEW-B-3Great business planning has a lot of moving parts. The more you can nail down things like your value proposition, your business model, and your go-to-market strategy, the easier it will be to you to be successful. There’s even that all-important detail of how your business will actually manage to turn a profit. The idea behind a business plan is to answer all of these questions in a single, relatively easy to read document.

But is a narrative business plan really the best option? To answer that question, it helps to understand the audience. Who will be reading this business plan? Will it just be investors and lenders, or is this something you’ll be showing to potential co-founders or high-value employees? What kind of document will give those people the information they need, and in the easiest-to-digest form?

Is a longform business plan really the best document to use in all cases, or are there better options available? Continue reading →

Taking The Pain Out Of Creating A Longform Business Plan

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SIBP-Blog-NEW-B-2Creating a successful business sometimes means doing things that aren’t the most efficient or effective use of your time. If you’re working with commercial lenders, old-school angel investors or partners who prefer traditional approaches, it’s entirely possible that they will ask you to write up a business plan before moving forward with them. As I mentioned in my last post, while I’m a huge believer in business planning, I’m not a fan of longform business plans.

If you find yourself in this situation, it’s usually easiest to just bite the bullet and create one. The more business planning you’ve already done — perhaps using something like the business model canvas — you should already have most of the building blocks in hand to create a narrative business plan. Continue reading →

Why Business Plans Are Bad, But Business Planning Isn’t

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SIBP-Blog-NEW-B-5One of the questions I’m most frequently asked as a business coach is “Do I really need a business plan?” It happens once every few weeks, and I’m asked by surprising variety of business owners, startup founders and soon-to-be entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, I still don’t have an easy answer, and by trying to provide some context for my take on the subject, I’ve gotten something of a reputation as a business-plan skeptic.

It’s time for me to set the record straight: I’m a huge believer in business planning, but I’m not a fan of business plans. If that sounds strange to you, allow me to explain. These two concepts aren’t as closely linked as you might think. Continue reading →

Alignment-Based Sales: Three Steps of the Alignment-Based Sales Structure

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SIBP-Blog-NEW-B-3What does the alignment-based sales approach look like on the ground level? It’s one thing to conceptually understand the theory, but it isn’t always obvious how to take that 10,000 foot view and apply it to your sales process. How do you start an alignment-based sale? What do you say to make sure both parties are still in alignment? How do you walk away when there isn’t an alignment?

Let’s roll up our sleeves and dig into some real-world techniques for implementing an alignment-based sales process. There are three basic steps: The Alignment Statement; Qualifying; and Continuous Testing. Let’s take a look at how each of these work. Continue reading →

Alignment-Based Sales: Five Core Benefits to the Alignment Approach

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SIBP-Blog-NEW-B-2We’re all consumers, and we all know what it’s like to walk into a store where the salespeople are paid by commission. From that very first moment we see the sales associate walk towards us, our guard goes up. No matter how helpful and pleasant they are, there’s an almost instinctual reaction we have as shoppers. We say something like “Just looking!” and hope that’s enough to keep them at bay.

Why is this? It’s pretty simple, actually. As shoppers, the last thing we want is to be pressured into buying something. This is the exact same instinct that your prospects feel when they agree to hear your sales presentation. Even if they know they need the product or service you provide, they don’t want to go through the ordeal of a high-pressure sales presentation. They put up the same sort of “Just looking!” defenses.

This is exactly why the alignment-based approach is so powerful. It changes the very nature of the interaction, removing the tension and apprehension completely. Here are five core benefits you will experience while using an alignment-based sales method. Continue reading →

Alignment-Based Sales: Alignment Sales in Action

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Modified from source image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/awfulshot/If you’ve spent any time at all in sales, you know how stressful it can be. Going into a selling situation often feels like contest, where the goal is to find the prospect’s pain, and to slowly press on that pain point until they become desperate for it to go away. You want them to become just uncomfortable enough about that pain to spend their money on your solution.

Is it any wonder that prospects often feel like salespeople are trying to trick or manipulate them into parting with their money? If you’re an empathetic person, which the best salespeople often are, it’s a process that really sucks.

The exciting part of an alignment-based sales approach is that it can make selling a lot more fun. Instead of creating a stilted, adversarial dynamic between the salesperson and the prospect, the process becomes much more about finding common ground. I also know it works, as I’ve personally sold millions of dollars of products using this exact sales philosophy. Continue reading →

Alignment-Based Sales: An Introduction to the “Always Be Aligning” Approach

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Modified from source image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/awfulshot/Allow me to destroy a major misconception about sales for you: Closing isn’t everything. It’s an important step in the process, but it’s not the winner-take-all endgame many inexperienced salespeople believe it to be. Closing a sale — particularly when it’s an initial sale with a new customer — should mark the start of a relationship, not the end of contest of wills.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my biggest issue with the “ABCs of Sales” approach is the puzzling emphasis on closing. It implies that sales is fundamentally about delivering a knockout punch to the customer, or that it’s something of a deception-driven, non-consensual relationship between the salesperson and their prospect. That’s a terrible way to build a customer base, particularly if you’re running a business where long-term contracts, renewals or subscriptions play a major role. Continue reading →

Alignment-Based Sales: The ABPs and ABAs of Sales

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SIBP-Blog-NEW-B-2In a previous post, I explained my many problems with the “Always Be Closing” approach to sales. In a nutshell, I find that the “ABCs of Sales” is a one-sided approach that creates the wrong dynamic for a sustainable business. The only thing it’s good for in the long term is alienating your customers.

If the “ABCs of Sales” is wrong, then what’s the alternative? I have two other acronym-ready sales philosophies for you: “Always Be Prospecting” and “Always Be Aligning.” Or, if you prefer, the ABPs and ABAs of Sales. These may not be quite as catchy-sounding as the ABCs, but they do deliver real-world results. Continue reading →