Entrepreneur Magazine Got it All Wrong
Entrepreneur Magazine had a recent article called 3 Weeks to Start Up.
I couldn’t disagree with it more.
It starts out okay. Tells you start with a viable idea, ask yourself if people need or want what you’re going to sell, if they’ll pay for it now, if they’re already paying for it.
These are the right questions to ask, to be sure.
But then it moves you immediately from the right tasks to the wrong ones. According to them, you’re supposed to “develop your look and feel,” start building your website, create an expense budget and more–BEFORE you ever try to make a sale!
I’d go right back to square one. Before investing time, effort, and energy into a business or product idea, try selling it FIRST. Figure out how you’re going to sell it, and to whom. See if it’s viable, not on paper, but by testing it in the open market. Save yourself the hassle and heartache if it’s not.
After all, you don’t have a business if you don’t have sales.
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Comments
I completely agree with Jim in this respect. My expertise is in helping companies “develop their look and feel” and sure I want clients to come to me and use my services, but I have seen too many that decide to build their brandscape before they have built their business and inevitably they fizzle before they can get the attention of the market. The successful ones build their business first on solid principles and then, later… sometimes much later, decide it is time to look professional and build their brandscape. I would recommend this every time. After all, I would rather have a solid client who keeps coming back, than one who looks good from the start but will have no more use for my services in 6 months because they ran out of prospects. Build your business first, then make it look good.
Excellent point–and interesting post. I think sometimes sales and marketing are the “red headed stepchildren” of the corporate world–seen as somehow less noble–when, really, they’re the ONLY things that matter. Because without them, there’s no business!
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