Start-up: February 2010 Archives

Barry Moltz has a great article on the mistakes that entrepreneurs can make while trying to sell their products and services:

"In order to find new customers or keep the ones you have, every entrepreneur needs to be able to sell. The biggest fear is that when someone says no to your product, you think they are really saying no to you.

"Most of us take it personally. Fortunately, the customer does not care that much about you! In fact, we actually can't sell anything to anyone; we just need to be there when they are ready to buy.

"This is why marketing and sales are so important to any growing business"

Learning to see has always been an important skill for start-up entrepreneurs, but in today's tough economy it can be the difference between the life and death of your business. 

There are enough challenges with start-ups -- finding capital, finding space, attracting customers, reaching breakeven, hiring employees, etc., etc..  Why do so many entrepreneurs add interpersonal problems to this the already long list of challenges that must be dealt with during startup?

I have written often about the pitfalls of working with partners in entrepreneurial ventures (see here and here for a couple of recent musings). When a partnership works well, it can help you achieve things you never could have achieved alone.  That was certainly the case with some of my partners in our health care venture. 

But, partnership problems can be a significant cause of business failure for deals that would have succeeded were it not for the infighting of the owners.

Such dysfunction also extends to the key members of the team who are not formally partners in the venture.  Team dynamics can soak up precious time that is needed to align the business to the market and getting customers in the door.

MyVenturePad has a link to a good post by Martin Zwilling at his blog Startup Professional Musings in which he looks at how to build a successful start-up team.

Culture really begins to take form with the first few hires, so make sure you look at not just people's talents, but their fit with your evolving team. 

Manage the team carefully to build cohesion.  And if someone is not fitting in, do not wait to long to remove that person from your business.  The longer you wait to act, the worse the problem gets, and the more damage will be done to your team.