Five Things No Coach Would Tolerate if Your Startup Were a Sports Team

Sports analogies are common in business and for good reason. Sports require discipline, training, teamwork, strategy, perseverance. Things which translate well to business.

So it surprises me when I see how regularly new startups make exactly the same mistakes over and over — something no coach would ever tolerate in an athlete (and no good athlete should tolerate in herself.)

No matter the sport, good coaches stress training and fundamentals. Starting a business requires laser focus on the fundamentals. But fundamentals are boring. Most entrepreneurs would rather skip the training, start playing the game, and assume their talent and dedication are the key ingredients for startup success.

Avoid these key mistakes “star athlete” startup entrepreneurs make:

1. Misunderstanding competition.
Entrepreneurs often get so obsessed with the aspects of their idea that are “better” in some way that they completely ignore all the ways existing solutions work just fine.

Think about your own daily life. In a given day, you do countless things. You work, you play, you have hobbies, you eat, you travel, you buy products and services. How often do you go out looking for a “better” way to do the things you do every day? You have enough to think about and what you are used to doing works well enough.

This is exactly the mindset that any new product or service, whether B2B or B2C, faces with potential customers. Competition is often just as much about customers having no reason to do anything at all than it is about how well your product stacks up against another choice. And if your customer already uses the competition, then chances are they have habits formed around it — habits are hard things to change.

There is only one way to address this and that is with hundreds of hours spent in detailed sessions with potential customers listening to them, not telling them why your solution is better, but listening to their needs. I guarantee you, what you think matters to them will be — at best — only a small part of the picture of their true needs.

2. Making sales estimates based on market size.
This one shows up constantly in startup business plans. I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard something like, “It’s a $10 billion market so even if we only get 1% market share we’ll have a $100 million company.” If only it were that easy …

First of all, there’s market size and then there is market size. How much to the people you are likely able to reach spend on exactly the solution that you intend to sell? Seriously now.

Focusing on market size ignores pretty much everything that actually matters in getting sales. A big market is great, addressing a sizable niche inside a big market is far better. Your business plan needs to address the specifics about how select customers make buying decisions, the barriers to purchase and cost challenges.

Focusing on a niche forces you to get down to specifics with potential customers. When you understand the detailed needs and wants of a specific group you can better address a long list of key questions your business must understand to succeed. The more specific you can get with a group of customers, the more likely you are to be successful when it comes time to ask them to buy.

Good business plans have names of specific customers and sales estimates based on actual feedback from decision makers who will eventually buy your product. Anything less is just a guess.

3. Inadequate understanding of competitive response.
Let’s say your idea really IS as good as you think. You’ve done the homework few entrepreneurs do of listening to dozens of potential customers, carefully mapping their needs, budgets, buying influences, etc. into your strategy. You conclude that your solution really has a place in the market. What’s to stop competitors from copying you?

A patent is rarely the right answer. Patents are expensive, take years to issue and along the way many of your patent claims are likely to be rejected or revised. If you do emerge from the process with a patent you will have to spend money on lawyers to enforce it.

It’s a very rare business that can rely primarily on patent protection to create a moat around its profits. If your business idea is appropriate for patent protection, then you should consider the patent as one piece of a strategy that revolves primarily around maintaining a deep relationship with your customers and adapting quickly to their changing needs.

4. Underestimating the difficulty of building a strong brand.
It is a very noisy world. No matter how clever your name and logo, the competition for customer attention is staggering. Just as many entrepreneurs put too much stock in patent protection, many make the mistake of thinking they can put a barrier around their customers with a brand.

Because we all encounter dozens if not hundreds of brands every day, it is easy for an entrepreneur — who sees his own brand constantly — to begin to put it on par with all the other familiar brands he uses. But it’s different for the customer. To the customer, your brand is likely one in a sea of clever messages washing over them constantly.

A good lesson in humility when it comes to branding can be had by strolling through the isles of your local wine shop. Wines clamor to differentiate for their buyer with brand and you’ll see countless examples of attempts to stand out, many of them very clever.

A good brand is important of course, but what makes the brand strong is what your customer associates with it. Over time, listening closely to your customers and providing what they want makes your business strong. A strong business with excellent customer satisfaction builds the brand, not the other way around.

5. Not being coachable.
And now we’ve come full circle — get this one right and all the rest will come easy. You simply must learn to take real criticism and constantly adapt your thinking. No good coach tolerates an athlete who won’t listen. Why? Because no matter how much talent one athlete has, he or she will never rise to greatness without the ability to take feedback, learn and change.

Did you gloss over the previous four points? When you present your idea and people question it, do you walk away thinking, “They just don’t get it?” If so, you need to check yourself and work harder at listening to the coach.

If you are ever fortunate enough to present to an A-list investor, you’ll likely find that they challenge a lot of assumptions in your business plan. Listen and adapt and you just might get somewhere. Argue with them and you’ll soon find a seat on the bench.

Source >> https://entrepreneurs.maqtoob.com/five-things-no-coach-would-tolerate-if-your-startup-were-a-sports-team-a3df4ae40d4d