Ensure the Price is Right for you
In many early stage companies the price for a high value premium product is often set too low. In my meetings with Entrepreneurs a standard tip is “try raising the price and see what happens”. Later on I often see that many come back to me surprised that the customers did not query the higher [...]
Be careful not to telegraph your “tell”
In a negotiation you want the process to be a fair exchange of terms on both sides. Newcomers to the negotiating game often give too much away early on and have a fight to get back to a reasonable position later in the relationship. It’s often impossible to raise a price back to a preferred [...]
There’s a skeleton in the elevator
Elevator pitches are a key part of business, both for raising investment and winning customer approvals that 90 second explanation of your proposition can make a huge difference. The elevator pitch was coined, originally, in the USA to describe the opportunity arising from the chance encounter in an elevator (Lift for UK readers) with a [...]
PCWorld don’t sell Pizzas
Apologies to PCW as I’m sure they could sell Pizzas if they really put their minds to it! This point is related to the importance of choosing the right sales channel for your product based on skills and customer recognition. Two main problems with selecting the wrong sales channel, firstly the channel may not be [...]
37% of strategies fail
On reading a Harvard Business Review article by Mankins & Steele in 2005 I found it very useful to study the causes for failure in strategy development and implementation. The word strategy has become an overused and misused term in modern business. We attempt to make something more important by attaching the word strategic to [...]
Your investor proposition is like a 3 legged stool
As I regularly prepare companies for investment readiness I’m asked many times what investors are looking for. This is a tricky question especially in these credit squeeze times. However many significant investment funds were financed before the current crisis and may be in a position to invest if the proposition is right. So what is [...]
Sometimes you need to think big, then even bigger….
I review many business plans in my high tech business mentoring roles and often I see entrepreneurs believing that if they are prudent, conservative or cautious about their business goals investors will look favourably on their propositions. They believe this caution will reflect positively on them and their business. In many cases the opposite is [...]
Technology can sometimes be a bad thing…
Tendency for High Tech entrepreneurs to stress the technology in their products can harm the success in selling the product. In some cases a weaker technical solution can win the day with better marketing. You must assume some types of customer do not understand or even care about the technology. If you are selling to [...]
Entrepreneurs must separate ownership from management
When you start out in business, as an entrepreneur, you have to perform multiple roles. At the same time you need to be management, director and shareholder. This multi-role, maybe even multi-personality, can become ingrained in a way of working which leads to problems when the company expands and involves others in the operation of [...]
Avoid being a morsel in the food chain
If you are starting a small business with a new product or service which adds in to existing supply chain and you plan to sell it to some pretty large customers in an existing market you should carefully analyse the supply chain. Entering into this pipeline of companies, making up the various suppliers to that [...]
