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What are the Three Clarities that Every Start-up Needs? Three Points

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Situation: Starting a new venture is a daunting task. You must determine market need and land your first few key customers on a tight timeline and budget. What are the most important areas of focus for the start-up CEO? What are the three clarities that every start-up needs?

  • The answer lies in the Three Clarities.
  • Clarity #1 – Deep Knowledge of Customer Pain Points. Your eventual success is not about the technology – it’s your ability to understand and address the needs of your customer. Research and talk to potential customers. Ask them about their pain and problems. What makes their job or lives difficult? Learning these facts takes time, patience, persistent questioning, and open listening both for what they are saying and what they are not saying. Once you have a clear idea about their need and can succinctly define it, you must determine whether your capabilities can address the customer’s need. Avoid talking about your product or solution until you clearly understand the customer’s need.
  • Clarity #2 – Understanding the Purchasing Behavior. Once you have identified your target customer, their need and your ability to meet that need, you must understand their current purchase behavior. Have they ever bought from a startup before? What happened when they did? Are they happy or unsatisfied? Where are the gaps in satisfaction? Particularly for a start-up without established credibility, it is critical to identify those purchasers who will take the risk to buy from a new company. From what you find, determine how you will frame a personal relationship with the likely buyer – how you will frame both your solution and the buying experience. Build a psychographic of the buyer so that you can quickly determine likely customer candidates.
  • Clarity #3 – Understanding the Decision-Maker’s Sense of Urgency. Who makes the purchase decision? In B2B sales is it the CEO or someone further down the organizational chart? Who approves the purchase budget? Why now? Do they have their ”hair on fire” so a decision must be made now? The essential question is: what are the alternatives to not having your solution?

Thanks to Naeem Xafar of Blitzerrmobile.com for his contribution to this article.

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How Do You Improve Delegation? Three Solutions

Situation: A company is growing rapidly. As it grows it is important to build the management team needed to support this growth. A few talented potential managers have a tough time letting go of previous responsibilities. How does the CEO help them to let go of previous responsibilities. How do you improve delegation?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Don’t teach method. The individuals to whom responsibilities are to be delegated may feel like trained monkeys, not the bright creative people that they are.
    • Set goals. Give them the information that they need to get there. Let them know that there is a procedure, and they are welcomed to use or adapt this as they wish. If they can find a better way that is more efficient – Wonderful!
    • Empower them. This is an investment. Like many investments, it may take time to generate a return, but be patient and wait for this return.
  • Look at the required roles and prioritize them as most to least critical to the company.
    • Start delegating the less critical roles, as well as the roles that are less time sensitive.
    • This will make it easier to maintain patience.
    • Also, delegate roles that play to the strengths of those to whom new responsibilities are being delegated. Those taking these roles will be happier and will do a better job.
  • Create an organizational chart for each department and responsibilities.
    • Make sure that all of the roles for which a department is responsible are included, but group these into similar roles so that there are, for example, 3-5 role delegations.
    • Prioritize each role for importance and urgency.
    • Take the least urgent and significant role and delegate it. Either assign it to an existing individual, or hire someone to take it on.
    • Once this has been done this and those to whom roles are delegated are used to them, do the same with the next least important or urgent role.
    • Do this over time until all the needed roles have been delegated, and managers are comfortable managing the individuals now responsible for them.
    • A valuable resource is the EMyth Revisited by Michael Gerber. It is a quick read and provides guidelines for how to delegate and let go of responsibilities the organization grows.

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