Customers Archives - Page 3 of 3

How to get investors interested

Posted on July 5, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

While watching the BBC television show the Dragons Den, quite often the ‘Dragons’ laugh at a business concept they are presented with and think it is ridiculous.

dragons den

Here’s the one thing that makes them eat their words every time:

Sales figures. Revenue, Customers, Repeat orders.

It’s only then they change their view from ‘not interested‘, to ‘I’m listening‘.

If you ever want to get investors interested, go see them once you’ve got sales. When you have revenue coming in it puts the kibosh on negative opinions. In addition, it increases value of your business and reduces the percentage you’d have to give away for a cash investment.

The Feedback Trap

Posted on March 23, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

I recently heard an interview with the Drummer from band Midnight Oil, Rob Hurst. He was asked how he felt about a particular record which made it to number 1 on the US charts. His response was this:

‘We were too busy touring, putting on shows to follow the bands progress.”

It sounded as though serving the fans they already had was more important than gaining new ones. And guess what happens when we do that? Our reputation grows and more fans arrive, they find us because we are delivering something special to those who already appreciate what we are doing.

The formula for success is to continue to focus on delivering good stuff to those who already believe in you. To improve our delivery to them. Just like Midnight Oil was continuing to perfect the live performance of it’s songs. They weren’t worrying if their songs were good enough, they weren’t focused on external feedback from sources like sales revenue or chart positions. They ignored all feedback, except that from existing fans (customers). They didn’t get caught in the feedback trap.

So what are the feedback traps of the modern entrepreneur?
–   Website traffic
–   Google analytics
–   Facebook friends
–   Twitter follows
–   AC Nielsen data
–   Market share statistics
–   (Insert feedback mechanism here)

These tools can be useful, but they also tempt us to change tack. They tempt us into believing we are strategically wrong, because the feedback is so instant. Where as the benefits of our strategy is never so instant. Strategy takes time to work, it takes belief and patience, more over it takes ‘the real feedback’ cycle to spread before we can truly know if we have something. And the real feedback cycle is what our current customers have to say, and if they spread the word.

Startups out there – don’t fall into the feedback trap.

No 1 reason being an employee sucks

Posted on March 17, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

The number one reason being an employee sucks is this:

You can’t sell your job.

No matter how good you are at what you do,

–   you don’t own your output
–   you are building other peoples brands and empire
–   you are at the risk of hierarchy
–   you are not servant to customers, but wage earners (the fundamental issue)

What this means is that as an employee you are not serving those who actually pay your wages – your consumers. Instead you become servant to people who are best at ‘internal politics’. So for you to succeed in this environment, you too must excel at internal politics. Which takes you always for important real world skills entrepreneurs develop. And then the final reality is that at some point in your ’employee career’ someone will not like you, and dispose of you. At this point you instantly lose any good will or employee equity which was built. Even if you are a stock holder, you still have no decision making authority.

employee-silhouette

The point is, if you want to build assets, being an employee makes it difficult because you lack control. If you want control, then you must have the courage to build something independently, like entrepreneurs do.

In order of preference

Posted on January 23, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

Face to face chat with single perosn who can make decision
Live internet video chat (skype / ustream et al)
Phone call
Internet chat (IM style)
Direct tweet
Text message
Email

2-faces
(Pic by Christian Gates)

So is this for Customers, Suppliers, Investors or Media?

All of them – they are all people.

Tell your story – ‘Quickly’

Posted on December 31, 2008 by Steve Sammartino

People are very time poor, or maybe just a little impatient. Regardless of which it is we have to be able to tell our story quickly.

Vanguard Investments do it in 2 seconds. Click here to see how they do it. (Watch the animation)

Even this chart below tells the story on long term ‘index’ investing. Of which Vanguard are the founding forefathers.

The recent downturn is a best a ‘blip’.

How long does your startup story take to tell? Here’s a tip – we’ve got a few seconds at most.