Sales

Captive

Air travel is an elevated time to shake and move above the clouds. Elevation makes us all feel successful, so hammering on some work or catching up on a good read/listen/watch feels great, but a nap is just as nice.

Think back to the last time you warped time by catching a mid-flight nap. Suddenly, a flight attendant shatters your peaceful slumber—not to share a friendly update for passengers but to rattle off a forced sales pitch for their branded credit card. Ouch.

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Attention is hard to earn.
If you have it, don’t waste it.

Now, imagine an alternate scenario. Instead of unwanted interruption followed by an impersonal script that makes us feel like prisoners instead of appreciated customers, what if the same offer felt more like a special little gift?

How might it feel to hear that you have been selected to receive a free beverage or tasty snack, paired with that same credit card application as a convenient napkin? This tasty presentation would naturally snag the attention of nearby passengers. As word of mouth amplifies interest, similar offers could be made for those willing to complete the silly credit card application. Engage or don’t, but this quiet surprise feels less forced and can become more of a complimenting gesture to show customer appreciation.

That’s just a thought exercise, but we’ve all sat in situations where we were part of a captive audience. There is a fine line and a big difference between adding or detracting from an experience after interest is sparked or sales are made.

How do we treat our existing customers? Do they get attention only when there are issues or you have more to sell? How might we inspire more lasting joy by slowing down, setting efficiency aside, even letting go in a way? Instead of being careless with earned attention, consider unexpected ways to delight customers, which will remind them why they chose you in the first place. Giveaways, handwritten notes, or any gesture that shows you care will retain better customers.

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“Once you wow an audience, the same trick may not work anymore.” -Seth Godin, Free Prize Inside

How we treat existing customers sets the scene and determines the realities of attention retention. When customers feel thoughtfulness, they will stick around because they care as much as you do. This translates into customer retention because true fans take pride in staying connected. They have more patience when issues arise and get excited to share your charming work with others.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Allergy Shots

I’ve embarked on a campaign to cure my seasonal allergies. Trying to understand the details of this immunotherapy reminds me how clarity effects confidence.

With allergy shots that require weekly visits for the first several months, then monthly visits for 2-5 years, you’d think there would be a sharp collection of resources to highlight treatment options, insurance codes linked to cost of care, and benefits/risk comparisons.

Proactively investing in your health is hard enough. Feeling like you’re taking a gamble without clarity on how a long-term effort may (or may not) come together, makes it way harder. I understand that healthcare is complex because everyone’s body and health habits are different, but there’s seemingly enough commonality to allow for a solid base of standardization, paired with different options and disclaimers to keep the variables in focus. Wish me luck, but this decision-making process has been cloaked in fog.

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“Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air. Work, family, health, friends, and spirit. And you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls – family, health, friends, and spirit – are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same.” –Bryan Dyson

As we look through the lens of entrepreneurship, delivering fearless clarity may put you on the hook and will turn some prospects away, but it adds efficiency to the sales process and leads to more satisfaction from better customers.

This does not mean we simplify everything. Simplification is polarizing, so delivering confidence through clarity is more about sequencing. Try delivering less information to ensure clarity, then support a well communicated slowness with connected resources to meet a prospect’s specific needs. This sequenced effort gives people what they need, when they need it. When everyone feels informed, confidence increases and the opportunity for more lasting collaboration is refined.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Attention Traps

As early moves are sequenced, a few creative assets can help founders translate emerging insight into valuable snapshots of the business. One-pagers, pitch decks, and investor memos are additional types of attention traps that entrepreneurs can use to ignite interest.

One-Pager

The one-pager is a punchy asset built to describe the most important elements of your business. Concise is nice, as the goal is to create immediate intrigue. One-pagers should be made to be seen by anyone. This means you must find a balance in giving enough details to show substance and realistic potential without giving away the secret sauce.

While you may know a lot about your business, the goal is to guide others through new layers of understanding. As you consider what content to include and how to format so much goodness into such a tight document, focus on creating curiosity to keep conversations flowing.

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The FliteBrite one pager from 2015.

 

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My guest column on consistency in the Business Record.

With a one-pager ready to share, invite feedback as you build confidence by sharing it with strategic investors, partners, and those who may kindle fresh progress.

Pitch Deck

Slide decks support a verbal presentation. Pitch decks add more information to help recipients (often investors) learn about your venture. With 10–15 slides, present the story of your business with eye-catching visuals, data-driven details, and links to more supportive content. Keep this asset concise and entertaining. Do so while identifying the market, problem, solution, signals of traction, moat-digging differentiators, team, competition, the ask, compelling calls to action, and contact information.

Knowing this attention trap is most often needed by founders raising financial capital, even if it’s in a closing appendix, it’s good to include more data-driven details to show research-based comprehension. Like back slides that support Q&A portions of a verbal pitch, market research, conservative financial projections, how money will be spent, and customer discovery results are all ways to prove you understand your business plan and how the numbers work.

That said, don’t numb readers. Avoid small font and word salads. Incorporate imagery that supports a captivating story. Translate your mission while making it clear how this venture will deliver serious returns. Like the one-pager, pitch decks are not crafted to secure an investment. They are designed to fuel interest and more conversation.

Investor Memo

Commanding an influential investor memo keeps people informed with the ongoing progress of your company. Along with sections you include in a pitch deck, investor memos create space to highlight the evolving details of your fundraising campaign, key performance metrics (KPIs), data visualizations, recent milestones, multimedia, needs of the team, and future goals for the company. Online platforms make it easy to manage dynamic, accurate, and interesting investor memos. The quick-to-digest but also real-time information is why investor memos are popular among well-articulated founders raising venture capital.

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If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. -Albert Einstein

With these attention traps set, alternate versions of each asset may help you share impactful details with the right audience. For example, a pitch deck for local angel investors may be different than a pitch deck for a global venture capital firm.

Connecting everything adds efficiency but maintaining a well-organized data room is not for the faint of heart. As any company expands, so will the need to update different types of attention traps that support an evolving story for a growing variety of onlookers.

 

BACKGROUND CONTEXT
We had spent all month exploring early moves to evolve business ideas into reality. Using our time dedicated to no-code wireframing, actively listening to others, telling customer stories with a colorful business model canvas, and escorting execution with business plans, to translate emerging insight into snapshots of a business. The one pager, pitch deck, and investor memo are distinct types of attention traps entrepreneurs can use to connect with those who care.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Melting Momentum

Once something melts, it’s never quite the same.

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Inspiration is perishable.

From the moment we decide to start building an idea into reality, the force required is geared toward finding and then maintaining momentum.

Meaningful momentum is awakened in endless ways. Early momentum might mean showing up at an event for the first time, researching the competitive landscape, testing an early hypothesis, leaning into customer discovery, recruiting potential co-founders, building product, and eventually activating a launch sequence. Once a project is launched, the need for momentum never fades. If anything, it only becomes more important. There are many more examples, but growing the business, achieving milestones, and celebrating progress are all forms of valuable momentum. Even in later stages of a company, momentum drives activities like succession planning, navigating a successful exit, and considering how your human, financial, cultural, intellectual, and network capital can be recycled back into the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

No matter where you’re at in your own journey, if momentum is maintained long enough, the result can be a flywheel effect that feeds on itself. Anything you want to grow will always require endless work, but with less friction, momentum delivers more time, understandings, and space for different activities emerge.

On the flip side, if momentum is melting, it’s difficult to recapture. These are moments to consider when and what to quit. If there’s enough energy to keep writing the story, it’s neat how there’s always the option to keep building. A few sparks that can help regain momentum come to mind. For instance, (re)connecting with the startup community, learning something new, saying “yes” to unlock adventure, saying “no” to create space, travel, revisiting customer discovery, building a new feature, considering a pivot, onboarding new customers, and adding to the team.

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Need help regaining momentum?

The longer stagnancy lingers, the harder it will be to realign momentum. Tactics to maintain a creative state of kamiwaza, even when momentum is melting, starts with communication. Keeping honest communication consistent adds clarity and is the easiest way to appreciate the realities of slowness. Reducing the weird by exposing the why, also keeps different stakeholders on the same page, even during more lethargic times. By reducing the tension that quietly brews in silence, teams may be able to run at lower speeds. If left unattended, this can devolve into a lack of urgency that brings new challenges, but at a lower speed, perhaps less movement is needed to regain/retain the sense of shared momentum.

When we play long-term games with long-term people, momentum is crucial, but set your own pace by exploring the type of momentum you need at different stages within the work. This awareness helps you quit chasing momentum and sets us free to forge better art, at a sustainable speed. This helps us multiply mass and velocity, which equates to momentum when, where, and how it’s needed to keep building.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Breakout Valuation

Breakout valuations are achieved when a business is valued based on how it makes people feel and its future potential, not just what it’s done in the past.

The nine components of a breakout valuation are confidence, vision, curiosity, people, communications, cash management, financial forecasting, capital strategy, and business design. Whether or not you sell your company, business owners who optimize in these areas, position themselves to capture a breakout valuation.

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This caffeinated contribution is a special adaptation from Breakout Valuation, which is the #1 New Release in Venture Capital and was written by my good friend, Patrick E. Donohue. Patrick is an entrepreneur, mentor, advisor, investor, valuation expert, and community builder who offers unique insights into the dynamics of money and business.

While you’re running a company, breakout valuations make everything easier. It attracts talented employees and quality customers. This expands your market position, makes financial capital less expensive, and invites vendors to extend better terms based on your surging trajectory.

Knowing what your ownership of the business is worth helps you make important financial decisions and becomes increasingly important as a business matures. If a business grows to the point where it becomes valuable to acquire, academic and finance professionals attempt to make valuation objective, but the complexity of each transaction makes valuation subjective in the end. Along with all the objective data, valuation is highly influenced by the environment, relationship, and personal views of the participants in a transaction. Knowing how investors and lenders use objective valuation tactics is crucial, but understanding the potential value of the business, articulating it to potential partners, and having them buy into the vision will arm you with an advantage to get what you want—a breakout valuation.

Breakout valuations are not aspirational. They emerge from what you are doing right now. It’s all about being clear with your mission and vision. It’s knowing your numbers and how everything comes together through a shared mindset, communication, and workflow. The pursuit toward a breakout valuation compounds, requiring attention today, and every day moving forward. This aggregates understanding and builds confidence. When the day comes to part with some or all of your business, the confidence from a breakout valuation will maximize the payout or deliver assurance in walking away from the deal.

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What are we doing today to support our goals for tomorrow?

By Ben McDougal, ago