In my prior entrepreneurship entry I talked about the key hires that a company had to make early on in its life. I purposely left out one of the most important: the sales team. This could be a VP of Sales, a Director of Sales, whatever, but for a company to succeed it needs to have qualified, dynamic, hungry salesmen (and women). That’s a given. The question though is not whether to have them but when! A company lives on cash. For VC funded companies the initial infusion of cash comes from VC Funds that invest a part of a given fund into a company. Obviously, if this is the only cash the company ever receives it won’t be long for this world. A revenue flow is required. To attain that flow sales must occur. But how? That’s the trickiest question of all. How do we get sales? Fortunately it’s simple: provide customers with a product or service that scratches a particular itch and one that results in a demonstrable return on investment (ROI). Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy to quantify nor to find those first customers — those “early adopters” who effectively will wish to live their startup aspirations
