Advice for marketing a start-up

Dear Bob …

I’m running a start-up business. Here’s my self-assessment:

• I haven’t put anywhere near enough effort into direct prospecting. Following what we thought was a very good model, the big emphasis has been on developing re-selling partnerships. That approach is starting to bear fruit — because folks in this business do see the goodness of what we’ve created — but it’s clear to me that the balance is not right.

• Our method is focused on winning opportunities and growing key accounts. To a large extent, it presumes that there IS an opportunity or at least that we know an account well enough to do some effective demand creation. True prospecting is a different skill area and I have to get better at it.

• Obviously, as a start-up, we come into this with no market presence, no brand or direct track record and so on. Most importantly, and definitely my failing, we started without much of a Rolodex. I say this was my failing because I had eleven years in sales with a well-known company in the same space. I had a very good reputation and all of that, but I didn’t cultivate my network at all.

What was going on was that I had become very unhappy in my work and had started to “punch the clock” rather than look at how to develop my career. When I cooked up my vision for this company, I was jazzed about career in a way that I never have been. (And, while taking some lumps, I am still jazzed.) Feedback and response to the idea was so good that think I leapt too quickly.

My summary is … great offering, no business plan.

I’m hoping that somehow you would see all of this and have some great, practical suggestions for me.

Now that this stuff has risen out of the murk, I will ask a much less murky question: What are your thoughts about marketing and prospecting when one is starting up? Preferably, on a shoe-string?

– Starter Upper

Dear Starter …

So here’s something I read in a golf magazine. It was written by Fuzzy Zoeller, decades ago. The title was, “Be Your Own Best Friend.” It was his best advice for improving your golf game and it’s stuck with me ever since I first read it. Here’s the advice:

If you’re golfing with your best friend and he blows a shot, what do you say? “Don’t worry about it. Focus on the next shot — it’s just one stroke. Just swing your swing. It’s a good swing.” And so on.

If you’re golfing with your best friend and you blow a shot, what do you say to yourself? “You IDIOT!!! What were you thinking? You’re such a loser. You’ve blown the hole, the day, and the rest of YOUR LIFE!!! You’re going to have to KILL the next shot to recover anything useful out of this. Dope.”

And so you blow your next shot.

The advice: Be your own best friend. Give yourself the same good advice you’d give anyone else.

Imagine anyone else you know had started a business with a great concept and no Rolodex. What would you suggest?

Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure it would be very good advice because the problem you’re facing is, for you, a shot from the middle of the fairway with your best club. The question of how to sell a great product is in your power zone.

So here’s what I suggest: I don’t know if you have partners or employees, or if you’re a one-man-band. If you have a team, pull it together and speak these words: “How are we going to sell this puppy?”

I do empathize with your situation. In 2004, IT Catalysts sold three weeks of billable consulting. It was a rough year, not helped at all by my complete incompetence at prospecting and networking. (I’m pretty good once I meet a good prospect, though.)

You’ll get through it. The secret, if there is one, came from Norman Vincent Peale. When you’re in a tough situation, plan the work and work the plan. I know I’ve found it helps. By having a plan to work I don’t have to motivate myself every day the way I’d have to if the first thing I had to do every day was to figure out what I was going to do that day to be productive.

I know this is a bit platitudinous (my gawd – that passed a spell-check!). But since you already know all of the specifics, platitudes are all I have left.

– Bob