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5 Tips for Selling Your Venture to Investors and Customers

March 8, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Does the thought of pitching to investors and selling to customers excite you or make you extremely uncomfortable? Some of you are very smooth at presenting, but not very successful at receiving funding. Others of you sound robotic, spitting out some artificial sounding sales spiel that you don’t believe yourself; you end up short-changing investors and customers on your viable venture.

Regardless of which one of the preceding scenarios describes you, Failure to Obtain Funding from investors and Failure to Acquire New Customers is the result of some mis-perceptions of your role as the CEO of your start-up. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Angels, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: , , , , ,

Selling Your Leadership

July 10, 2012 By 2 Comments

In coaching and mentoring the entrepreneurial community, I’ve found that many startups are still bamboozled by what’s required for successfully negotiating business competitions. A colleague from the venture capital community recently told me that one VC firm heard over 3,000 pitches last year…and funded only 6!

There are a lot of similarities between the entrepreneurial community and the mature business community both small, mid-sized and large.  What’s involved in business development is selling. For technical entrepreneurs and technically-based companies, the word S-E-L-L remains as the most dreaded four-letter word there is. Yet it’s the basis of business, no two ways about it.

Business development will never be an intellectual or academic exercise.  It’s transactional.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Angels, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Professional Development & Social Selling, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: , , , , ,

Engaging Your Eyes and Ears in Sales and Startups

June 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Customer conversations. Customer discovery. Sales lead nurturing and management. Call it what you will. I am talking about engaging real live customers. The types of customers who will pay real live money for your products and services. After grants and investor dollars are expired and you actually are in business, for real. Even when you’ve been in business for a while, and realize you are stuck and unable to move your business to the next level.

Engaging your customers involves more than just words. Especially if you have the opportunity to be in the same room with the individual with whom you are conversing. Even a virtual conversation, where there is video along with audio, can offer up a wealth of information. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Angels, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

What’s your Business Plan? Do you even have one?

November 15, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Have any of your clients ever asked you whether you had a business plan? And whether you could provide them with that business plan?

What did you say? What did you do?

Having a business plan, and re-visiting it every year, is one of the most important aspects of running your business efficiently and effectively. And I don’t mean the annual strategic planning exercise where everyone sets goals and expectations with wiggle room that either a) are met or b) have to be revised.

I’m talking about a Business Plan.

A business plan lets you know where the money is coming from and where it goes each year, based on prior years’ activity and performance. A business plan helps you quantify what you qualify to your customers day in and day out. It’s the basis for why your doors remain open and why customers should want to work with your company. It’s more than a business plan. It’s a business platform.

You use it for obtaining financing and you use it for being acquired, if that’s your plan. Your Business Plan is your credibility.

For all you engineers, IT professionals and technology folks who bemoan what they didn’t teach you in engineering school, or wonder whether to get an MBA or an MEng or PhD, here’s a clue: understand what it takes to produce a business plan.

Whether you are an inventor, a start-up, a newly funded company with venture capital and state funding or a mature business who wonders why you can’t move to the next level, a lot of your future has to do with how you view the data from the past. And your ability to combine that knowledge into a solid Business Plan.

You can Google the term “business plan” and find templates all over the internet. So this information is available to you. What usually isn’t available is the expertise on how to craft the business plan effectively and convincingly so that you, your employees and perhaps potential investors understand who you are and where your company is going. In essence, your business plan is a road map for everyone to confidently follow. So get yourself a coach or a consultant to assist you in producing this important document.

The elements of a Business Plan include:

  1. Business Overview (Executive Summary)
  2. Marketing opportunities and drivers
  3. Competitive analysis
  4. Business Model
  5. Management Team
  6. Financials (or the pace of getting things done, including your exit strategy)

If your organization already has a business plan, ask to see it. Your career development hinges on being able to understand a business plan and potentially write one. You need to understand where you fit into the organization and what makes your organization “tick” within the competitive marketplace. If you understand your company’s business plan, you can determine where your skill sets best fit in as you take the steps to develop your career.

What’s your Career Plan? And how does it fit into your organization’s Business Plan?

Think about it.

Filed Under: Angels, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Entrepreneurs and StartUps Tagged With: , ,

Do you know who your customers are… really?

September 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I worked with entrepreneurs yesterday at the I3M Event: Igniting Innovation in Michigan, sponsored by the Detroit radio station and CBS affiliate, WWJ.950. It was an excellent event. And since I have a high regard for stewardship, I try to give back to the local community in which I live. So there you have it.

And the most provocative question I asked, resulting in a jaw-dropping silence, was “Who are your customers?” Because marketing and selling and engineering to anyone and everyone is complete chaos, regardless of whether you are an entrepreneur or not.

However, as I told these talented entrepreneurs, there are so many mature businesses who have succeeded to the $2.5M gross annual revenue mark (and even to the $90M mark) who are undisciplined in terms of their marketing and sales program.

Now, you and your company are not going to turn down a “gift” project that seems to fall from the sky. However, when and if that happens, do you ask yourself what redeeming traits you and your company have that contributed to being awarded that project?  Because this new customer didn’t choose you or your company simply because you were the prettiest face. They researched your company, trust me on that one. The Internet provides a great deal of business intelligence that is available to everyone. And Owners are making sure they know with whom they are doing business.

There tends to be a difference between who you and your company does business with and who you and your company are best suited to work with. And your ability to define your target market (the folks you could do your best work for and cultivate) becomes critical to sustaining growth in this economy.

There also tends to be a difference between diversifying your customer base and having an open-door, y’all come policy to business development.  The latter typically results in having lots and lots of customers who tie up your engineering and production time with lots and lots of walk-in or scheduled small-scale projects that need to be slotted in between the larger-scale, longer term, more profitable projects. And these smaller projects can make up as much as 50-75% of your revenue stream in a heartbeat.

Does this sound like your company?

Diversifying your customer base is a disciplined approach based on analysis of your customer base and your deliverables. When’s the last time you or your company undertook this type of analysis?  When I asked my entrepreneurs, and even business owners of matured companies, again there was silence. And I don’t think I was asking such a  difficult question. But it’s the one area that so many businesses “don’t have time for” because they are busy meeting meeting payroll or creating three-year strategic plans.

Yup, it’s the end of Q3 2010. Wow. And how time flies.

It may be a good time to revisit who you are working for and where your marketing and engineering efforts are focused.  This exercise just may round out your perspective.

Think about it.

Filed Under: Angels, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Sales & Engineering Collaboration, Sales, Pitching & Business Development Tagged With: , , ,

Do you bring passion to your engineering career?

August 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Last week, I had the privilege of working with the heads of two entrepreneurial companies, one retail and one IT. I’m a strong believer in stewardship. At least once a month, as part of an Expert Board panel, I provide business development and sales insight to start-ups and companies taking their small businesses to the next level.

Let me tell you: this is fun. Because these entrepreneurs are passionate about their businesses. And as much as these folks learn from what I and the rest of the board recommend, I also learn from these entrepreneurs. Their perspectives impact mine. And their enthusiasm is infectious.

How many of you are passionate about what you do?

Do you sit in meetings waiting to be called on if the conversation (ever) gets to the technical side? Is that the only time during the meeting when the light comes on, the spark is ignited and you “do your thing?” Technical Passion On Demand?

What about the rest of the discussion preceding your performance art or following whatever solution you suggest? Do you participate? Does your spark turn off and you retreat back into “cubicle mode”?

And while we’re at it, are you passionate about what everyone else on the team brings to the table? Are you passionate about the business development continuum in which you work? Because – news flash here – you work within that continuum.

You are not a discrete variable that is taken off the shelf when needed and put back on the shelf after your skill set has been deployed.

You know, these entrepreneurs last week didn’t have anywhere near a full understanding of the nuts and bolts of the business development and sales engineering process. Yet they were willing to keep an open mind about the ideas which were being placed on the table. They remained vulnerable, of course, and perhaps a bit defensive, concerned that the Expert Board might quash their ideas.How delighted they were when we took their ideas and built upon them. They became even more passionate about their quest to take their businesses to the next level.

Can you picture this scenario?

Because they were willing to stray outside their comfort level. Because we didn’t say “no you can’t do that” but rather “here’s what I would suggest to take that idea and make it even better.”

Because they were willing to stop playing it safe.

How passionate are you about the engineering expertise you provide for your company? How can your position at your company allow you to bring your passion for engineering to the company table? How receptive are you to bridging the gap of What You Want (aka What Frustrates You) and What You Have at your company?

Like these entrepreneurs, you will reap the reward of what you bring to your company table day in and day out. What your company offers you is an opportunity to bring your spin, your perspective and your passion for engineering to the capabilities offered to their customers.

It’s what we all bring, our capabilities and our areas of specialization, that creates the greatest value to ourselves, our organizations and our career path.

Remember when we were starting out? We were all start-ups, entrepreneurs of ourselves. We had no baggage, no status quo, no concept of “I’ve always done it this way.” We simply had our own passion about the possibilities out there.And yes, we were naïve as well.

We are still that start-up personality and passion. There are projects that “fire us up” and rekindle that spark.You know, where you fearlessly move forward and assume risk because you are so intrigued by the engineering problem or business case on the table.

What would happen to business outcomes if you brought that passion to your company’s table for each project?

Think about it.


 

Filed Under: Entrepreneurs and StartUps, Professional Development & Social Selling, Sales & Engineering Collaboration Tagged With: , , , , ,
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