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Nothing Happens Until Something is Sold

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Allan Colman, Asking for Business, Business Development, Entrepreneurial Startups, Entrepreneurship.

NOTHING HAPPENS UNTIL SOMETHING IS SOLD

“Nothing happens until something is sold” is the theme of one of my high school friends, a very successful entrepreneur. After reading THE REVENUE ACCELERATOR – The 21 Boosters to Launch Your Startup, he sent the following email.

“Allan, I still think these kids coming out of Votec, High School and also college need some insight on what’s going to be expected of them when they get into the business world and how different it is from an after school job an what management needs and expects of them. Many don’t realize that management and sales create the work so they have a job to put their expertise to work and make the equipment work.

” Nothing happens until something is sold.

” Promoting the person going from working with the tools to going into the office to the “behind the desk” environment to work need to know how to treat coworkers and how coworkers expect to be treated. A critical skill entrepreneurs need is “team management” and how to build it. This is an often overlooked attribute early stage enterprise entrepreneurs fail to recognize and is a leading cause of startup failures.

As Mary Bara, President and CEO of General Motors cautions, “You must explain the “why” in order to achieve the “what”. Nothing happens unless something is sold. #team #entrepreneur #entrepreneurs #startup

We Did It! Amazon Best Seller

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Allan Colman, Asking for Business, Business Development, Business Strategy, Entrepreneurial Startups, Entrepreneurship.

WE DID IT!!!
Thanks to you, THE REVENUE ACCELERATOR – THE 21 BOOSTERS TO LAUNCH YOUR STARTUP has earned an Amazon Best Seller!

Accelerator Chapter 21

” Mary Bara, President and CEO of General Motors once said, “People will do the what if they understand the why.” Our readers learn that if they do understand the “why” of actively moving from product/service development to sales, they now know the “how.”

Think of your business like a hot-air balloon. While it is still tied to the ground, it can only rise so high. It has to burn fuel just to stay a few feet above the ground. But once you cut loose the tether, it can rocket to the sky, go for miles, and grow. Businesses in the fledgling stages may feel that way too. It takes a lot of mental energy, a big learning curve, and persistence to get it to where it starts to pay off.

Having advised or mentored over 100 startups, I recognized early-on that a key to entrepreneurs’ future success was for them to begin thinking about their next steps while still deve #business loping their product/service. THE REVENUE ACCELERATOR Success Roadmap helps you in three major ways:

* Making your efforts more productive;
* Helping you concentrate on what really works;
* Providing a simple, visual system to set and track prospecting and
results.

Using the simple, non-time consuming Accelerators we suggest, you will be in a position to make that future product/service of yours successful.

I’m with you all the way” Allan Colman

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Sage Thought Leadership Podcast

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Allan Colman, Business Development, Business Strategy, Entrepreneurial Startups, Entrepreneurship.

-Sage Thought Leadership podcast
dedicated to the possibility that entrepreneurs continue the work of creation. We celebrate them by allowing them to tell their stories and share their knowledge with others. In doing so we energize the success of businesses around the world through the imagination of our people and the power of technology.
https://lnkd.in/guSHUEJU

Link – https://lnkd.in/gVxqV76X
https://lnkd.in/ge3jkRhp

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THERE ARE NO GUARANTEES

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Allan Colman, Business Development, Business Strategy.

THERE ARE NO GUARANTEES IN BUSINESS #business

In life and in business dealings, there are no guarantees. In my role as a business accelerator advisor, I’m often asked about the likelihood of success for various sales approaches. Rather than offering a definitive answer, I often draw on Jay Abraham’s responses to hypotheticals.
Will everything work out as well as we expect it to? Hardly.
Will some of the things we hope for not happen or turn out worse than we expect them to? Undoubtedly.
Will there be some things that turn out better than expected? Probably.
Will you uncover more opportunities as things progress? Yes, if you pay attention.
After hearing responses to the above questions, I typically ask “Will you do everything in your power to make the result of this business opportunity an outstanding success?”
Put the effort in. Then work, work, work until you see the results.

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5 MINUTES OR YOU ARE OUT THE DOOR

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Allan Colman, Asking for Business, Business Development, Conversion Rate Optimization, Practice Pitch Meetings.

5 MINUTES OR YOU ARE OUT THE DOOR

One of my clients was an in-house labor counsel for a Fortune-500 company. She had been with a law firm for 10 years prior to her current job. Having made numerous pitches before starting her in-house position, she knew the type of research and approaches that would resonate.

Now, wearing a different hat, she found herself frustrated with how many outside vendors approached her, knowing nothing about their company’s products or competitors. She enforced a five-minute rule: If the salesperson did not demonstrate knowledge of their needs, challenges, and opportunities within the first five minutes of the meeting, out they went.

I asked her to tell me more about her rule. She was proud to say that the vendors who met with her learned the message quickly , and they “got right to it.” She found a similar rule was a useful tool among her own team as well.
Their meetings:
·       Got right to the point
·       Did not waste anyone’s time, and
·       Resulted in clear and concise decisions.

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BOOMERS TO Z’ERS

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in 4 GENERATIONS, Allan Colman, Business Development, Business Strategy, New Business Development.

BOOMERS TO Z’ERS

It goes almost without saying that different groups interpret messages differently. Using the correct message channel requires careful preparation. Encoding a clear message is more complicated today because selling your product or service may be of interest to any of the four major generations currently vital and active in our world.

·       Baby Boomers: Born between 1946 and 1964, Boomers are a group with significant incomes who are looking for solutions in selecting products and services.
·       Gen Xers: Born between 1965 and 1977, Gen X is a smaller group than the Boomers. With their kids no longer their main focus, their tastes for products and services are in flux. Selling to them requires more detailed research on specific needs and concerns.
·       Millennials: Born between 1978 and 1994, Millennials are beginning to collect savings and they work well with technology. Concerned with costs, they spend more time analyzing purchasing options and waiting for sales or specials, and they want to see others successfully using a product or service before committing.
·       Gen Z: Those born since 1995 think and act online. They are “digital natives” and want to hear from you via text, call, Zoom, etc. As this group matures, they will have a greater impact on the economy and be in control of significant purchasing decisions.

Your product or service will require completely different sales approaches depending on which generation you’re marketing to. You may limit your targeting ultimately to only one or two of these groups. Spend time researching the survey data and demographic details of each group and take special note of their differences. These will impact how you tailor the need and use for your product to them.

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BUILD BUSINESS WITH DISTRIBUTION DEALS

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Allan Colman, Business Development, Business Strategy, New Business Development.

BUILD BUSINESS WITH DISTRIBUTION DEALS

A major cost for many start-ups that develop physical products is storing and distributing their products. One shortcut to the market is establishing a relationship with a distributor who services your marketplace, otherwise known as a distribution deal. In the beginning, Made for Success was a two-person company operating a book publishing company out of a residential home. Lacking warehouse space and shipping infrastructure, the company didn’t have the essential infrastructure to expand.

The company started to research solutions and identified a distribution company called Ingram Publisher Services, a division of the world’s largest book distributors. Ingram, a multibillion-dollar company representing hundreds of mid-tier book publishers, created this solution to provide distribution and sales infrastructure.

Upon signing the deal, Made for Success instantly had access to five distribution centers domestically and three distribution centers internationally to store and sell books. The company could also print inventory in four countries across the globe, all integrated into complex operational infrastructure for storing, selling, and invoicing. Within a short period of time, Made for Success books were available globally. Otherwise, it would have cost the company millions of dollars to build out. In return for the distribution infrastructure, Ingram Publisher Services receives a percentage of the wholesale revenues from each book sold.

Distribution deals bring numerous advantages, including decreased time to market and access to infrastructure that is beyond the scale of a company like Made for Success. Odds are, if you operate a start-up, there are distributors in your industry who can help provide the ability to scale your business at a fraction of the cost of building it yourself.

Major Book Review

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Allan Colman, Business Development, Business Strategy, Entrepreneurial Startups, New Business Development.

BOOK REVIEW
Goodreads.com

The Revenue Accelerator Lib/E: The 21 Boosters to Launch Your Start-Up
by Allan Colman

Alexander’s review
Sep 21, 2022

Dr. Allan Colman knows of what he speaks. There’s a sense of appropriate, professional and self-assuredness with the tonality of his new work, The Revenue Accelerator: The 21 Boosters to Launch Your Startup. “I was never taught how to sell. But by going through the struggles, obstacles, roadblocks, challenges, wrong turns, and searching for real opportunities, my self-education took hold. I wrote 21 Accelerators To Launch Your Start-Up to help you avoid many of the problems start-up entrepreneurs experience in making the leap from building their product or service to selling it,” he writes at the beginning of the book. “…I (craft) my pitch meetings much more carefully, and the 50 speeches I was doing annually for several years focused on problem solving and benefits. These and many other lessons are incorporated into this book to make your transition from building the product/service to successfully selling it.” Fair enough, and the read does just that. The Revenue Accelerator sort of feels like the Ask Jeeves of startup advice manuals, and overall business and leadership advice books in general. It’s clear Dr. Colman wants to create something that is essentially the penultimate guide to success, and he himself succeeds in this endeavor on more than one occasion. The read is broken down into densely detailed chapters, all of which are packed to the brim with information respective to their select subtopics. Each one of these subtopics are called, in titular style, Accelerators. Colman is also not afraid of making things personal. He writes in vivid detail about his own experiences climbing the corporate ladder, unafraid to humbly admit mistakes made in the process.

………………………………….

It’s that mixture of brash, almost tough-talking confidence, along with genuinely objective, knowledgable passages that elevates the book. I felt like I was actually in good hands for once, rather than someone telling me how much I was so.
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