Salesby5’s Erik Darmstetter Writes….”The most important thing in your start up”
June 18, 2009
By Erik Darmstetter, Salesby5
In the movie City Slickers, a group of friends take a “vacation” at a dude ranch. Curley, played by Jack Palance, is a rough, wise old cowboy who shares the following with Mitch, played by Billy Crystal:
Curley: Do you know what the secret of life is?
Mitch: No, what?
Curley: This. (Holds up his index finger.)
Mitch: Your finger?
Curley: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean [anything].
Mitch: That’s great, but what’s the one thing?
Curley: That’s what you’ve got to figure out!
Lee J. Colan gives some insight to this classic scene, “Leaders have to figure out the One Thing that defines a meaningful purpose for their teams. The One Thing should answer the question Why are we here? You may think that finding that focus isn’t critical; but in fact, it’s essential to your success. The most important thing in business (and life) is deciding what is most important.”
Get your team together and figure out what your One Thing is. Then, that should guide all of your decisions and your actions. Focus your energy on your One Thing. It won’t happen overnight. Look at it like a habit that you want to start. For my company it is about Inspiring others, for Starbucks it is providing the 3rd place (1 and 2 being home and work).
Salesby5’s Erik Darmstetter, Advises on Having a True Purpose in Your Startup
May 14, 2009
By Erik Darmstetter, Salesby5
When you’re building any company or an organization, having a true purpose is a fundamental driver that will get future employees on board as well as help keep you on a successful path. This purpose is the why you do what you do and not how or what. If it is to make money then you have no real real purpose for keeping people or recruiting people on your team as getting a paycheck is a commodity.
Purpose is the reason to get up in the morning and do what you do every day to help benefit others with your product or service. The importance of have real purpose versus something that sounds good is that customers or employees can tell if your culture or your behaviors do not match what your said purpose is or REAL Vs. FAKE!
Our purpose at Salesby5 is to inspire others. We talk of inspiration often, as it has so much to do with sales. One of the stars on our team is Kya, who is our Brand Evangelist. She has radar that picks out “REAL.”
She has a unique strength to know if someone is sincere (real) or fake in seconds, where most are about 100 times slower. Why does this matter? She can pick off someone trying to get a date, sell copier toner or attempting to get in your wallet faster than my computer can get an Internet connection.
Tomorrow’s success is today’s real. This is why we fire customers who are rude, lie or don’t pay when they say they will pay. This is why we do not take a customer or vendor who we do not feel has the REAL Win-Win attitude versus just WIN. We need to feel good about making them prosper or there are plenty of others.
A few thoughts on being real regarding sales:
- If you have to remember your pitch: Fail
- If you can’t remember the prospects problems and your opportunities: Fail
- If you remember a client’s child’s name because you care: REAL!
- If you remember they love Papouli’s Greek Grill’s Mediterranean Salad for lunch on Thursdays: REAL!
The point: Get real or get a new purpose. Today is about transparency and about being real. Fake billboards or sales pitches that leave me wondering don’t work anymore. Do you need some REAL in your life?
Salesby5’s Erik Darmsetter Shares His “Sales” Views on Future Success for Startups
March 23, 2009
Sales Strategist, Erik Darmstter should know a thing of two about sales. His company focuses on getting sales, hence the name Salesby5. Here’s two basic principles of sales strategy which Erik recommends.
#1 Future Focus…
Today: A future focus is 10x more predictive of success. A person who asks “what do your customers want?” is salt and pepper. Your need to focus on what your customers will want, from price reductions to time savings and communication enhancements are a priority. As Wayne Gretzky says “Skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”
Summary: What can you do today to help your clients with something they need or will need? What is it they will not need today or tomorrow, but 3 months, 12 months and 3 years from now?
#2 Five Ways to Un-Sell Your Customers and Your Team for Startups….
1. Come to work with a less than positive attitude or state of mind.
2. Do what you do to get the next job vs. Do what you love and love what you do.
3. Return calls or emails in days versus minutes.
4. Have a phone service versus a human answer the phone.
5. Use 1998 communication tools, like dumb phones and check email weekly.
Do you have any of these issues? How fast can you fix them?
No one asked for the iPod, the TV or the radio!
Ideagin Takes Leadership Role for San Antonio’s Startup Community at SXSW
February 25, 2009
Next time you run into Ideagin’s Dean McCall or Jason Cronkhite, buy these guys a beer. Or, if your budget permits, a case of Alamo Beer (another startup on the radar of this blog).
Dean and Jason are renting 4 contiguous booths at SXSW and showcasing some of San Antonio’s coolest startups: BlogCatalog, Salesby5, and IncSpring. Think San Antonio Fab 4, if you will.
Now back to Ideagin….
Last week, I paid a visit to their offices. They are not only doing cool coding and web stuff, but they’re getting Podcast Ready back and up & going. Dean managed to get Podcast Ready moved to San Antonio for a re-start, so we can all re-rock and roll.
If you are going to SXSW, be sure to make Ideagin’s outpost a must see!
Startup Advise: by Salesby5’s Nan Palmero and Erik Darmsetter
February 17, 2009
San Antonio has some really smart people here in town who can help you with various elements of your startup. We’ll periodically have contributions from local thought leaders like Salesby5’s Nan Palmero and Erik Darmsetter.
In this post, Nan and Erik give their view on focusing on benefits.
When was the last time you saw a restaurant advertising free salt and pepper?
We often ask startups this question and always get the same grin – they know we are trying to tell them something, but they’re not quite sure what.
Advertising “FREE SALT AND PEPPER – ALL YOU CAN EAT!” is ridiculous and guess what, you might be advertising exactly that. How many millions of dollars per year are spent on banners, posters and mailers advertising “Free Checking?”
If we asked what is special about your startup, would your answer be your people, your customer service or your prices? Is any of this truly remarkable; meaning would anybody want to remark about any of those offerings? If they would, then what exactly is it that is fantastic? Do your reps deliver flowers to clients that are having a bad day? Does your customer service stay after hours to help you figure out your BlackBerry, even though their job has nothing to do with technology? Are your prices DRAMATICALLY lower or maybe dramatically higher than the competition?
What the world wants is new news. If you have this, your startup is on the right path. Now go out and tell people what the benefit is in working with your startup with 5th grade simplicity in under 15 seconds!
Remember, even if your startup is best in class, you may not have stretched enough to do something remarkable where people want to talk about you.