Category Archives: Blog Posts

If You’re In Business, You Need To Understand The Business Of Sales

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IMG_2329In my work as a business coach and mentor to early stage companies, I get to meet and work with a ton of great folks. Their businesses couldn’t be more different from one another, from the kinds of products and services they offer to the sizes of their staff and their target markets. There’s a huge amount of diversity in my work, but there’s also some common threads.

One of those common threads are the mistakes. This incredible collection of entrepreneurs, owners and executives I serve all seem to have the same blind spots when it comes to the business of sales. What is that blind spot? They don’t give their sales the same level of attention and focus that they give other areas of their businesses. Continue reading →

Cash Doesn’t Equal Customers, Part 2

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Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/76657755@N04/

Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/76657755@N04/

I’ve coached a wide variety of businesses, and it’s not uncommon for entrepreneurs to reach out to me directly when they need help. In my current Kauffman Foundation Entrepreneur-in-Residence role, I’m often contacted by companies looking at the possibility of bringing in some form of outside funding. One day, out of the blue, I was contacted on LinkedIn by a small educational technology company in my home region of Western North Carolina.

After talking with the founders, a husband-and-wife team, I realized the company had good potential for growth. They have great products, they had done their homework, good traction, and they were both dedicated to making their company succeed. But everything wasn’t perfect. They wanted to grow the company, and they needed money to pay for that growth. Continue reading →

Cash Doesn’t Equal Customers, Part 1

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Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/76657755@N04/

Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/76657755@N04/

One of the biggest mistakes early stage companies make is confusing the need for more customers with the need for more cash. It’s a very common misconception, and one I encounter all the time as a business coach. It often happens when the founders hit a wall with the company’s growth, and the only solution they can see for getting to the next stage is raising more money for things like bigger space, more staff or more equipment.

I’ll sit down with these entrepreneurs and managers to talk about their long-term strategies and growth plans, and I hear something like this: “We’ve got a great product. It’s going to change the world. But we just can’t get it off the ground, so we need a bunch of money so we can buy all the things we need to be successful.” Continue reading →

Growing A Business Through Capital and Traction, Part 2

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SIBP-1While securing financial, knowledge and relationship capital is the biggest and most immediate challenge most entrepreneurs, startups and small businesses face, it is by no means the only challenge. A close second is gaining traction.

What exactly is traction? It’s basically all the things that help you sell more of your products or services. The more traction you have, the more momentum your business has. The more momentum your business has, the more viable it is and attractive it becomes to outside investors.

For an early stage company, gaining traction is really about building your sales. There are other kinds of traction that will become important later on, but for a business that’s just starting out, traction and sales are effectively the same thing. And there’s a good reason that these two concepts are connected. Cash is king. Continue reading →

Growing A Business Through Capital and Traction, Part 1

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SIBP-3Every small business, startup and entrepreneur I’ve worked with has run into the same two challenges as they have grown. These factors come into play regardless of the market, the industry, the nature of the business, and the business model. What are they? The need for outside capital, and the need to gain more traction.

To put this in non-business terms: Every business eventually needs more resources to support their growth; and they need the ability to sell more of their stuff. Let’s break these concepts down a little.

Capital is the number one priority for growing your business. Too often, it’s thought of as a one-trick pony. Capital isn’t simply a financial investment. Capital can also be knowledge and key relationships, for instance. That kind of capital can be much more valuable than someone just writing you a check. Continue reading →

From Entrepreneur to Business Coach and Podcaster

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IMG_2329A few years ago, I came to a really important crossroads in my life. I had successfully launched a new company, and it was growing rapidly. Things were going really well by all accounts. But at the same time, I was terribly unsettled, and I didn’t know why.

I don’t do well with being unsettled. Something was nagging at me, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. So I did some really serious soul-searching, and I came to a realization that surprised me. Just having a successful business wasn’t enough. If I wanted to be truly fulfilled, I had to help others realize their own success. Continue reading →

Sales As A Core Business Competency, Part 5: Sales Staff

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SIBP-2Let’s say you’re really far along in creating your business model. You understand exactly what your customers’ needs are, and you’ve crafted an outstanding value proposition for them. After a long decision-making process, you’ve decided that the best course of action for your business is to dive in with both feet and sell to your customers directly.

You’ve also decided that you’re not going to sell through your website, or rely on something passive like a kickstarter campaign. You’re actually going to hire people.

Hiring a sales staff is a big step. It’s time to ask yourself a big question: “How much will I have to pay in order to set someone else to sell for me?” Continue reading →

Sales As A Core Business Competency, Part 4: Economics

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SIBP-1What exactly does it mean to professionalize your sales process? It means making your sales activities a core function of your business. If you do it correctly, your business will be much more profitable, and you will make a lot more money.

In the earlier posts, I’ve explained the foundation of a professionalized sales structure: customers, value propositions and channels. Now it’s time to construct the larger framework that foundation supports. That means talking about costs and profits. In other words, we’re talking about the economics of your business. Continue reading →

Sales As A Core Business Competency, Part 3: Channels

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SIBP-2I’m a process guy. I like to break down complex systems into their most basic structures, looking for places where things can be improved or made more efficient. In my work with entrepreneurs and small businesses, I often see the biggest process bottlenecks in the early stages of sales process. And there’s no place this is more obvious than in how a business approaches their channels.

A channel is simply another way of saying “Places to sell your stuff.” You can also look at channels as a series of branching paths, almost like branches on a tree, with each one reaching out to a specific kind of customer. Just like a tree, you can often get the best results by knowing which branches to prune.

Right off the bat, most businesses need to make a big decision in which branch to prune. Will they focus on direct or indirect sales? Direct sales means selling directly to the customer or end user, while indirect sales means that your customers aren’t the final customer, and instead they sell to the final customer as middlemen. Continue reading →

Sales As A Core Business Competency, Part 2: The Value Proposition

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SIBP-2How well do you know your customers? Do you know what they really care about? And, most importantly, do you know why they buy from you?

You don’t need to be a genius to realize the best way to get candid feedback from customers is to simply ask them. You’ll be amazed and how much you’ll learn if you actually talk to your customers.

You might learn, for instance, that the biggest problems your customers are trying to solve isn’t the one you thought it was. Perhaps you’ve been pitching your product on its price point, but your customers are more compelled to sign on the dotted line by your service plan. There are countless factors that go into making a sale, and the only way to determine the decisive ones are to go straight to the source. Continue reading →