Why Your Startup Needs a Sales Methodology. This article originally appeared on Inc.com Like most startup entrepreneurs, when I began my first company in 1999 I had no formal sales experience. I did have the wherewithal to visit potential customers and try to understand the pain points that I thought could be solved with our solution. This is a very important to do when you first start a company.
It’s what I call “the evangelical phase” of a company in which you’re out trying to persuade customers that a product you’ve designed is going to meet their needs better than other solutions on the market. Invariably your first efforts at product won’t quite hit the mark – and this is OK. It’s OK because in an era where you can much more rapidly prototype and build products it is far more beneficial to launch your first version, get initial customer traction and then talk to your customer base to understand how well it meets their needs.
I’m going to set up the framework today and in future posts I’ll drill down into each area. = Pain. The 10 Fastest-Growing Industries for Small Business. Past performance is no guarantee of future results, as the old business truism says. But you also may have heard that you can’t know where you’re going without knowing where you have been. To get a sense of which industries small businesses are growing in, the analysts at Raleigh, N.C. -headquartered private-company financial-information company Sageworks ran some numbers for Entrepreneur.com. Here’s a look at the industries where U.S. companies with $10 million or less in annual sales have shown the highest and lowest percentage change from Jan. 1 to Dec 31, 2012. As a benchmark, the average growth rate across all U.S. small businesses in the time period was 8 percent, says Libby Bierman, an analyst at Sageworks.
Fastest-Growth Industries for U.S. Related: Hunting for Business Ideas? Slowest-Growth Industries for U.S. Related: Franchise Forecast Continues Strong for 2013 Not all of the businesses on the fastest-growing list are service based. 8 Ways to Come Up With a Business Idea. The start of the year is a great time to gear up to start a business. But, of course, you first need to figure out a winning concept. "You have to come up with a lot of ideas to be successful," says Stephen Key, cofounder of the website inventright.com based in Glenbrook, Nev., and author of One Simple Idea for Startups and Entrepreneurs: Live Your Dreams and Create Your Own Profitable Company, (McGraw-Hill, 2012).
Key, who has licensed more than 20 products in the last 25 years, says he generates ideas by finding different ways to engage his mind, from walking the aisles of stores to brainstorming about holes in the marketplace. Here are eight techniques from Key and other experts that could help get your creative juices flowing: Ask yourself, "What's next? " Successful business ideas are often ahead of the curve. Think about trends and technologies on the horizon and how you might move into those areas, says Sergio Monsalve, partner at Norwest Venture Partners, a Palo Alto, Calif. MEI | Multicultural Entrepreneurial Institute. Εθνικό Μετσόβιο Πολυτεχνείο: Με το βλέμμα στην νεανική επιχειρηματικότητα. Φαίνεται ότι η έντονη συζήτηση γύρω από την νεοφυή/νεανική επιχειρηματικότητα έχει περάσει πλέον και την πανεπιστημιακή «πύλη».
Μια πύλη ομολογουμένως αρκετά κλειστή σ’ ότι σχετίζεται με την (στρεβλωμένη) έννοια της επιχειρηματικότητας όπως αυτή διαμορφώθηκε μέσα από αθέμιτες πρακτικές χρόνων στο ελληνικό επιχειρείν. Με την στρόφιγγα της κρίσης να πιέζει επικίνδυνα για αλλαγές σ’ όλα τα επίπεδα, μια ομάδα φοιτητών από το Τμήμα Μηχανολόγων Μηχανικών του Εθνικού Μετσόβιου Πολυτεχνείου σε συνεργασία με τον καθηγητή και Γενικό Γραμματέα του ΕΙΔΙΠ (Ελληνικό Ινστιτούτο Διοίκησης Παραγωγής Προϊόντων και Υπηρεσιών) κ.Κωνσταντίνο Κηρυττόπουλο, προέβησαν στην ανασύσταση του φοιτητικού του τμήματος του ΕΙΔΙΠ.
Η στόχευση ξεκάθαρη: να ανοίξει υγιώς η κουβέντα για επιχειρηματικότητα και τις startups στους κόλπους του μεγαλύτερου τεχνολογικού ιδρύματος στην Ελλάδα, όπως είναι το Εθνικό Μετσόβιο Πολυτεχνείο. Ο κ. Ο κ. H εκδήλωση έκλεισε με μια ζωηρή ανταλλαγή απόψεων μεταξύ του κοινού και των ομιλητών. 7 Steps to a Great Elevator Pitch | What Is an Elevator Pitch?
A clear, comprehensive business plan is one of the most critical components of any business. But without an equally well-crafted elevator pitch, an entrepreneur may never get around to showing his or her business plan at all. Whether you're looking for investors or just trying to get people interested in your business, your ability to explain what makes your business unique and hook your listener in less than a minute could make or break your success. Entrepreneurs and business professionals shared their best tips for writing and delivering a great elevator pitch. 1. "Eighty percent of your success will depend on your opening line. 2. "While creating interest and value is key, remember to be authentic and realistic. 3. "Be specific, but use plain language when describing the problem your product or service solves. 4.
"When crafting your elevator pitch, you first need to think about who you'll be in the elevator with. 5. "Avoid telling your listener that you have a 'revolutionary idea.' Εκπομπές | Crash Course in Business Plan Competitions. Earning their keep: Freshfully's Sam Brasseale and Jen Barnett. Photography by Jason Wallis For Jen Barnett, winning two business-plan competitions was about more than just prize money and bragging rights--it made the difference between launching her company and not. In July 2011 the Birmingham, Ala.
-based web and marketing strategist and her partner, web designer Sam Brasseale, won the incubate! Freshfully.com launched in November 2011 to immediate success, exponentially surpassing Barnett and Brasseale's projections. On May 1 Freshfully's brick-and-mortar store opened to the public; it was profitable immediately.
"We have not made any financial contributions ourselves," Barnett says. Prizes from business contests run the gamut: A seemingly infinite number of local and business-school competitions offer small-change awards of $5,000 to $15,000; meanwhile, Rice University doles out six-figure prizes annually, as do accelerators MassChallenge and TechStars. Mike Grandinetti agrees. 3 Critical Elements of an Investor Pitch. The 10 minutes or so an entrepreneur has to pitch an investor can often make or break the future of the startup. When the encounter goes well, millions of dollars in financing can propel an idea into a successful reality.
But, more often than not, entrepreneurs don't nail the pitch. The investors at New York City-based venture capital firm FirstMark Capital, for example, receive more than 1,000 inquiries from entrepreneurs each year. They meet with only a couple hundred hopefuls, and it can be clear within the first few minutes if an investment is worthwhile or not. FirstMark founder and managing director Lawrence Lenihan and his team have seeded star companies such as the social-sharing site Pinterest, online ticket marketplace StubHub, and e-commerce platform Shopify. We sat down with Lenihan to find out what he finds most important in a pitch. Beyond having a strong business model, here are the three elements he considers most crucial: 1. Related: Live Chat With Stars of 'Shark Tank' Hiring Tips: 9 People to Remove From Your Inner Circle. You are what you eat, and you definitely are whom you associate with. The people closest to you make all the difference--in a good and a bad way.
Of course, it can be tough to find great new connections and friends to add to your inner circle; people who will support you, help you, and encourage, motivate, and inspire you. It's a lot easier to spot the people in your inner circle who are holding you back. If you have people like these in your inner circle, remove them: Devilish Advocates Devilish advocates are rarely advocates for anything other than their own egos and points of view.
Keep the people who ask smart questions, share lessons learned and ways to do things differently, and offer to help you if a problem does pop up. Get rid of the people who always forecast doom and gloom based solely on their bad experiences. And you don't need them. Raving Fans On the other end of the spectrum is the person who thinks your every thought and deed is astounding, amazing, incredible. Inside Scoopers. Is Marketing Truly Necessary? For the last two decades of the 20th century, management consultants asked: "Is Sales truly necessary? " The most common answer was a variation of: "Maybe, but not for long! " For example, in 1992 Peter Drucker wrote, "the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous [and] the right motto for business management should increasingly be 'from selling to marketing.'" This kind of thinking was echoed in concepts like "frictionless markets" where it was assumed that buyers would "eliminate the middle man" and buy directly from vendors across the Internet.
In these scenarios, Sales was seen as a dying profession while Marketing became ever more important. What Is Marketing Anyway? Answering the question is impossible without first defining Marketing, which turns out to be surprisingly difficult. "The process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers. "" Wow! Accountability vs. A Better Definition The advantages of such a no-nonsense definition are that: Where Marketing Fails. 10 Questions to Ask Yourself When Testing a Business Idea. You've got a business idea you're jazzed about, but aren't sure if it's feasible.
What you need to do is test the concept to see how it stands up to a series of rigorous questions. "You are always testing," says Andre Marquis, Executive Director of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship at Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. "What you start with is rarely what you end up with. " Where to begin? Here are 10 key questions to help you evaluate your business idea: 1. 2. 3. 4. Related: How to Sharpen Your Decision-Making Skills 5. 6. 7. Related: 9 Proven Sales Tips for Introverts 8. 9. 10.