As tempting as an easy solution can sound, most turn out to be “crutches” and won’t get you to career or financial heaven. Here are five of the crutches I have learned that don’t work.
1. Let me send out some literature. This may well be the biggest crutch for the new sales rep. Brochures and literature don’t sell your product. Yet almost every sales rep I know makes this mistake, thinking or hoping that a sale will happen once the prospect gets the fancy, tested, full color, glossy printed folder. I can still remember the day I sat in front of a sales force all proud as punch about our new sales literature and asking for their ‘feedback.’ I mean the brochure was nearly perfect, it told our story in an convincing-meaningful-objective way, at least to ME. One of our sales rep just looked up and took the piece off the table and tore it in half. I surmised he didn’t think too highly of it.
2. Posting and sending resumes. This must work for someone, right? Or why do we keep doing it? If you need a job, please do not expect that you will get a response by simply posting your resume up on one of those monster job boards. The next step happens when the act of posting doesn’t work–-you start emailing it out to companies, hoping that HR is just sitting there hoping and praying your resume shows up. Remember that job hunting is a lot like work.
3. Having Others Raise Money for Your New Venture. There is something inherently exciting about new ventures. No one is more passionate and believable than the entrepreneur who has an idea in the concept stage. And he passionately wants to believe that raising money for it will be a slam dunk, so easy in fact that someone else can do it for him. I don’t know the stats on this, but I would wager a Big Mac that there are an unbelievable number of companies that go legs up because the founder was waiting for his better-connected friend to raise the money. I have raised millions for three companies now, via hundreds of angel investors…and only ONCE did someone deliver on this promise for me.
4. The Build-a-Better-Mousetrap and They Will Come to You Mistake. The crutch is actually believing that a better mousetrap always wins. What wins is better marketing, better sales, better execution, better operations. If this were not true, product design firms (who can always build it better) would own the world instead of being for-hire. The classic example is the product centric business plan which has literally one paragraph that states “once product development is achieved, then sales and marketing will commence.” okay, bokay.
5. Lowering the Price Means More Sales. If this were true, we’d all be driving Yugos today. Price has precious little to do with the acceptance or success of your product.
What have I missed?
2 users commented in " Throw Away Your Crutches "
Here’s a common crutch: Sales will solve everything. Sure, we all know that sales are critical. But when sales go down or don’t meet expectations, the ugly realities of business get exposed. Expenses that are bloated, bad customer service, inefficient business processes, employees that are overpaid or who haven’t increased productivity. If sales are rockin’, business owners will often use this as a crutch to not deal with issues.
Deal with your issues while times are good and it won’t be as difficult when times inevitably are bad. What if Detroit had started doing this in the late 70’s before Japan started kicking our butt?
Scott…this is a great point.
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