Back on the Rollercoaster Part 3B: Do you need a Website?
The irregularity of my blog postings could be a worrying sign. Afterall it is, at present, one of our principal marketing tools. Thankfully the absence of any recent blog posts is not a sign that I have nothing of any interest to say. The reality is that we have been busy (see next blog) and therefore I’ve been doing rather than talking about doing. As with most start up adventures, we have not been following the idealistic direct path to success.
The beauty and difficulty of being a start-up is that you have to be able to adapt and move your goalposts to ensure that the right opportunities are not passed up. You have to continually ask yourself how the opportunity can fit in with your ultimate story. Sometimes the opportunities are too left-field and can become a distraction. Other times you can spend months eying up a game changing opportunity and focus on getting it across the line when something jumps out of the undergrowth right beneath your feet. You have to be prepared for the unexpected.
When we started this elemental adventure we did it with three advantages:
I. As four founders we had experience of having grown and built companies so we were at least partly prepared for the emotional torment of what can be good or bad news.
II. We had put in our own money with the knowledge and mind set that even with no sales in the first twelve months we would be ok. We were old and wise enough to know that it takes time to build a brand, reputation and portfolio – particularly in the space we work in.
III. We have a network of friends and colleagues who have been remarkably successful in their fields and who are always trying to find ways to help.
It is point three that has been really good for us so far. In my post a couple of weeks ago I talked of the wonderful help that @Dave Katz has provided and whose efforts you will see in the coming months. At the same time friends, our team and past colleagues have been keen to introduce us to potential customers and partners.
Whilst in a start-up everyone is, and has to be, a sales ambassador for the company. In our particular world, and unfortunately for everyone I encounter, the principal sales role sits with me. For us, and the work we do, sales is all about building a level of trust. It isn’t and can never be a hard sale. I don’t have a widget to display.
What I need to be able to get across is that we will understand your business and its value economics. We will then work with you to answer whether technology would help you and if so, what technology. We will be proud when we have analysed your business and then recommend that you don’t need technology, or if you do, its free and off the shelf. This may seem counter productive to us as our lifeblood is building software, but when we set out it was with the rationale that we wanted to create value for our customers and partners. We want our customers to know that when we do recommend building software we are not just thinking about our pockets but theirs as well.
So for this type of sale it’s all about relationships and trust. A cold call to a potential customer won’t work for us. We can’t send a glossy portfolio of things we’ve done, in fact we haven’t had time to finish building our website to represent all the brilliant brand ideas Dave Katz helped us with (soon to be rectified). We also don’t have a niche such as only building websites, we simply build what is needed so I can’t just say “do you need a website?” This is where our friends, colleagues and family have been so important in giving us lovely warm introductions. We have met some wonderful companies through our network and have met more wonderful companies through many of those companies. We have begun to strike relationships and friendships with some great people.
The beauty of what we do is that, at some point, every company can benefit from business consulting even if it just for a sanity check and we all know software will affect every business over time. That’s not to say we are always the right people to build that software or provide that advice. We are experienced enough to know what we are good at and our reputation means too much for us to leave a disappointed customer. However, because of these introductions we are at least considered which is the most important thing when you are a start-up. Being known is critical.
An introduction by someone trusted helps break down that initial barrier of “why should I talk to these guys? I don’t need advice about my business and I certainly don’t need a website!” It gets us on the path to learning about new businesses and therefore being able to advise in a meaningful way when the company does want a system or an application to improve or change their world. For our part we are genuinely interested in how businesses work. We like to understand the drivers of value for businesses and, with each new encounter, we take on board more tools to become more effective at what we do.
Some of you will be thinking “so what was the point of this post?” In reality its really a longwinded thank-you message for all the introductions and help you have all provided. My only request is that you keep it up. Otherwise there will be too many pointless posts, or I will be asking you if you need a website (after selling one to myself).
