Let’s keep it really simple this time.
It’s this; What’s in it for them? That’s it.
So here’s my top 2007 stimulus list to help:
-
Profit
-
Savings
-
Environmental benefits
-
Ego
Feel free to add yours.
Category: Selling
Newton’s Laws & marketing 2.0
Physics and business once more…. Markets and motion.
Law 2: Force equals mass multiplied by acceleration The rate of change of momentum of a body is proportional to the resultant force acting body and is in the same direction.
Start up blog interpretation; Your brand or start up will only grow by the force of the energy that you and your evangelists (passionate users / early adopters) put behind it.
If we want our start up to grow, that growth rate (or decline) will be directly proportional to the effort we put into it.
Conversely a competitor pushing us backwards with more force has the same impact.
A start up won’t just grow. Organic growth is a hoax. Organic growth is your customers or passionate users pushing it for you. In this case we’re lucky, we’ve managed to create an idea worth spreading…But it’s very difficult to do.
In the end, the growth is always our responsibility. We need to be the force acting and pushing.
There’s no promotion without self promotion
Read the title of this blog entry again and think about it deeply.
This is true for your job, career, start up or existing business. Don’t be afraid to promote yourself and everything you do. In fact, we must do this to be successful.
We have to sing your own praises before anyone else will.
Sale of the century
Are you prepared to knock on doors, engage everyone you know and sell any chance you get, or would you be too embarrassed to do so?
We need thick skin if we want to champion a start up. And that involves selling every minute of the day, in every conversation. If we’re not prepared to do this, maybe we haven’t got what it takes, or worse, we don’t believe in what we’re doing.
Selling the valuable
As soon as something becomes more valuable the human inclination is to sell it. How many times have we heard;
‘the shares doubled in value, then I sold them’.
‘Our house has gone up in market value by $500k, We’re putting it on the market’.
If an asset has become more valuable, so has the ROI. The interesting thing about ROI, is that your internal ROI is related to what it cost you, not the current valuation. If we ‘Sell the valuable’ the replacement asset can’t have an equivalent ROI. So we lose out.
The same goes for a start up. When we have offers to sell out, maybe we should consider why and hold on.
The Donald
I’m not suggesting you’ll learn entrepreneurship watching The Apprentice.
But the Donald came out with a reasonable quote in a recent episode.
After one contender* defended her weak concept by saying… “it’ll sell itself, it’s a Trump building…”
The Donald responded with “Nothing sells itself”.
* she got fired that episode.
Story telling giants
Story telling is a really important skill for entrepreneurs. Although disguised with strategy, financials and tactics, we’re trying to hold an audience – we’re story telling.
Sometimes the audience will be VC’s, sometimes the audience will be your employees, sometimes customers, sometimes….
An imaginative story telling kid has an advantage as a mid 20’s entrepreneur, no doubt. But if you can’t hold a crowd in the office or the local pub, how can you sell a dream? We must be story telling giants.
The good news is we can practice. On our family, friends, or anyone. A gag, a news story, an event, in fact any story will do.