Lessons Learnt From Starting a Business: Part 1
Sell.
There are a range of lessons that I have had the privilege to learn throughout the journey of starting my own business. I will share the main lesson in this piece. As I intend this piece to serve as a reminder to myself and to be useful to the readers, I will present this lesson and the ensuing sub-lessons in terms of verbs.
The first lesson is to sell. As far as selling itself, there are three sub-lessons that I have learnt. Firstly, if one does not sell, there will be no revenue. This means that the company is not financially supported and the business will not be able to function fundamentally. That is, you have to close down—it is the end of the story, as far as this business is concerned. A business can only go on for so long without any revenue. On the flip side, once revenue begins to cumulate, you are able to continue operations, explore and utilize necessary resources, serve your clients and have less anxiety as a business owner, to name a few benefits. It should be evident that the benefits of being financially supported outweigh the drawbacks of being otherwise. A rule of thumb I follow is if you have revenue, anything, if not most things, are possible; without revenue, nothing is possible.
When I started my first business venture in July, 2023, I made the mistake of delaying the action of selling. I had been too concerned with ensuring that my product was perfect before I approached my clients. Even when I did approach my potential clients, I was asking about their pain points without pitching my product. Before I could create the supposedly perfect product, I had been forced to close down the company and bear pretty significant financial losses.
In my second venture today, I am hyper-concerned about selling—contacting new leads and existing connections, following up with clients, pitching and closing. I ensure that selling is my number-one priority, because I know that if the selling isn’t done, team members are not able to draw a salary, which means that we are not able to play our part to serve our clients. I also do not want to live in anxiety, and want to know that everyone can be paid at the end of every month.
Secondly, selling allows you to collect real, valuable and rewarding data. When you sell, your clients will send you messages, explicitly if you are lucky and implicitly for the most part. In the case of rejections, explicit messages may be presented in the form of your “replies being too delayed”, specific areas of your products “paling compared to that of your competitors”, or your pitch “being insufficiently clear in how you can solve their pain points”, amongst others. On the contrary, implicit messages may be presented in the form of frowns, head-shaking, awkward smiles and outright rejections devoid of reasons. In these cases, you are to probe for more information, or you can, or need to make inferences, especially if your clients are not inclined toward sharing. In the face of and response to these messages from your clients, you can either sell better, or go back to the drawing board with your team members, or both. The main point is that you have received feedback (data) from actual clients, and you can take the necessary action to rectify and implement continuous improvement.
It should be clear that about the same applies to confirmation of deals and when you receive positive feedback. Explicit messages may be presented in the form of your “efficient responses and customer service”, “comprehensive pitch”, or “effective solution”; while implicit messages may be in the form of smiles, applause, or words along the lines of “great jobs”. Similar to the aforementioned point, you have received feedback (data) from actual clients, and you can take the necessary action to sustain your processes while implementing continuous improvement.
Unfortunately, I have come across many individuals who are excessively concerned with the “research” aspect of entrepreneurship. Similar to my mistake outlined in the first sub-lesson, they spend vast amounts of time administering surveys, googling, and reading reviews on products that do not belong to their brand without selling their own product, service and/or idea. This is a huge mistake, in my estimation. All the data that you will be able to scour from these processes will not be as valuable as ones that you retrieve from actual, potential clients. This is because the data collected here are theoretical, whereas data collected from real, potential clients are real, rendering them valuable and rewarding.
A question may arise: in terms of utility in obtaining useful data, what is the difference between merely surveying, researching and asking about pain points, and actually selling to the client? From my experience, the former is only helpful if you have no idea what product or service to sell; in which case, it might be a good idea to hold off starting a business. Anyhow, clients often do not even know what their pain points are. The latter, on the other hand, if done well, should entail the former—in more direct terms, the process of good selling must entail discovering what the pain points of the client are, either via asking questions directly or making inferences based on what he shares. Significantly, in the latter, the client can reject you, whereas the client cannot in the former (unless of course, he refuses to participate in your survey and tells you to stop dreaming about starting a business—a piece of feedback I have received before, in harsher terms than I have hitherto phrased). This reiterates my aforementioned point about the client delivering crucial messages to you.
If you are delaying your sales process because you fear rejection, you will not collect these valuable and reward data, and you are not ready to start a business. There are some things that you do not get if you are not all in—the process of data collection and risking rejections is one of them.
Thirdly, selling allows you to brand and broadcast your presence. Just in terms of simple statistics, the more you sell, the more people you will speak to and make your brand known to. If you are able to make an impact on any of your leads and have them talk to others about your brand, one form of marketing—word of mouth—has been implemented for you. The more that people know and talk about you, the better. In my experience, which is consistent with the principle of liking, especially familiarity, if a lead learns about you from a loved one, friend, or even an acquaintance, the rate of closing skyrockets. The prerequisite for such a scenario however, lies in relentless selling.
Alternatively, or additionally, the principle of scarcity could be utilized in this third sublesson. To illustrate this, I will share an act that I am always consistent in, which is sharing with (hot) leads how existing clients are working with us. Whenever a corporate training or consulting session has been concluded or when positive feedback has been given to us, I share this piece of news with all my existing leads. There have been times when a lead is intrigued by the progress of our existing clients, resulting in the confirmation of a deal.
Final Words
My most important lesson in starting a business has been to sell. The sub-lessons are that
If I do not sell, there will be no revenue
Selling allows me to collect real, valuable and rewarding data
Selling allows me to brand and broadcast my presence.
An Analogy to Remember
To further illustrate and clarify this main lesson, I will share about the lemonade business analogy which I often employ when reflecting on business. If today, I intend to start a business selling lemonade, the most immediate and obvious task to me is to sell. If I do not sell, there will be no revenue (sub-lesson number one), which means I will not be able to make up for my expenses of lemons, water, sweetener, amongst others; to purchase more ingredients; or even to continue selling lemonade. Eventually, I need to close down and stop selling lemonade.
On the other hand, selling allows me to collect real, valuable and rewarding data (sub-lesson number two). I can google and search all I want on what constitutes the best lemonade, but it’s more helpful if I can sell to my first client, who either informs me of how great my lemonade tastes, or how terrible it is. I can then take the necessary steps, either sustaining my processes or making adjustments.
Lastly, selling allows me to brand and broadcast my presence (sub-lesson number three). If I don’t let others know that I am selling lemonade, I won’t manage to sell any lemonade. The more people that know, the better. If I am lucky and have been a nice person, these people might even bring their loved ones and friends to visit my lemonade stall. Their acquaintances might experience the FOMO and buy from me too.