If you are a sales person in an early B2C Start Up (internet company), you better watch out on what sales targets you set for yourself or are set for you.
You might end up being blamed for achieving them!!!
Yes, that can be an outcome of a loosely set target for a few sales persons in the company. Concentration on product development and user acquisition has to be the primary focus and any deviation might not be liked by the team.
Do not overburden yourself with thoughts like – let me generate revenue ASAP ‘whichever way I can’. The last part of your vow may cost your start up. Do not loose your focus. Just because you have pressure (from angel investors), you should not get yourself into things that you never intended to do. I totally understand that sailing only one way without having options open is anyways suicidal but that does not mean you would venture wherever you see money.
A very common example if I may quote – In a B2C model of business, trying to get into a B2B side just to make few quick bucks before you actually become revenue spinner through your B2C model.
Well, what do you see here – I see a pressure or may be a greed to make money faster. Worse – you do not wish to continue on this side of the revenue making but you are doing so only to make some initial money to survive or prove it to your investors. Few may say – “What’s wrong with that? We make some money as we go along, still keeping the focus on main stream, sounds ok to me!” Well, it may not be as easy as it sounds. B2B model has its own complications, you might get early push as you would be able to make some good cash (sometimes in advance also) but have you thought of the strict timeline, customization, expectations handling (internal and external) that will kick in from day one? It would be disastrous for the main line of the business if, to fulfill all the B2B promises, you end up jeopardizing the initial plan of improvising and expanding the B2C side.
Planning to earn fast is nice but it has to be in an organic form and all the efforts to take a shortcut may result in failure. All the more failure if the plan is to make money to keep the angel investors happy. Am not sure but they would also not like to see this trend (provided you have explained it the right way to them). You should personally believe that what you are doing is in the right interested of the company and all of its employees and not just for keeping your advisors shut.
Coming back to the topic of this blog post. I am doomed to fail if I plan to get awesome number of deals (other than user creation) in the early days as when you look back you would see there are not enough resources to work on your deals. Apart from that, your start up might need you at multiple other critic places than just cracking deals and celebrating, don’t you think?
With marketing or CRM executive not in place [assuming these folks comes expensive you can do without them for quite some time, only the rich and famous employ such top spenders – sorry to say that but that’s the reality, unless you are adjusting and creative enough]. Anyways, since no other person would be a non-techie in your office, you might have to take up a lot of task that no one has the time to deal with.
First and foremost , writing back to your existing users who are your bread n butter and the best evangelists of your brand. Talk to them more often than not and keep them engaged. Yes, this is your job.
2. make sure your company account in social media is buzzing to the core.
3. Who handles the abrupt calls from users? You. Do not let your tech team waste time talking to users for hours, they may not be the best people to handle user phone calls. (They may not not know how to say the words – no, never, not).
4. Make sure you proactively involve yourself in product development.
5. Forget sales plan – have a office outing plan ready. Techies tend to forget that there is a world outside!
coming up next – Product Management: Whose baby is it anyways?
Interesting, Aditya!! 🙂
Thanku kiron. Glad u liked it!