Expert Insights

Many inexperienced startup founders expect sales to come flooding in as soon as they launch their product and marketing campaign. In reality, that rarely happens even if you have an outstanding product that is fairly priced. I have seen many startups flounder at this point as the team gets discouraged by the lack of sales and traction thinking that the product is a failure. The trick is to be patient and take a very hands-on approach initially. In this article, I will provide a strategic outline for the earliest stages of your sales initiatives.

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In the first article in this series, I discussed how to create a marketing strategy for promoting your startup as well as how marketing activities should determine marketing channels. In the next few articles, we will go through each activity—starting with writing—and discuss cadence, format, and channels, which will give you the remaining details that you need to execute your marketing strategy. The main driver that determines which activities will likely be most effective for your startup depends on the characteristics of your ideal customer as well as the capabilities of your team. Similarly, which channels are most likely to reach your target audience hinges on where they hang out and get their information.

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The number one reason why startups fail, according to CB Insights, is that they never find a market need for their product. The sixth most common reason why startups fail is that they create a user-unfriendly product followed closely by not listening to customers. Think about that for a second. Three of the top mistakes that startup founders make can be solved simply by talking to your customers.

I personally learned this lesson that hard way on not one occasion but multiple times. What’s more embarrassing is that most of my professional career was spent leading user-centered design and user research teams, so I know that engaging your customers in a dialog can seem overwhelming. I understand that startup founders often rush to build their product because they are excited about their idea, or they think that testing their concept or product design are distractions requiring too much work. Not only that, doing customer research can be intimidating given that there are many techniques, which are complex in their details. This article will hopefully help you get started.

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