Start Ups Should Start Selling Yesterday

Being a start up requires a lot of set up. But setting up your business should never be what is preventing you from starting to sell.

Why?
- Getting awareness about your product takes a long time. Research on how many customer touchpoints it takes to get awareness varies from 5 to 32. Either way, starting early will get you ahead here.
- Getting customers to finally purchase your product also can take time. They may know about it and be interested, but it could take them months to be ready to buy. Most business to business sales take 6 months before someone buys, and this can be much longer based on the pricetag and the complexity of the sale.

So how do you sell early?
Figure out the 5 things that you'd have to complete before you feel like you can start selling. You'll be surprised that 80% of the time it is only 5 things, and 80% of the time you can finish these 5 things in a lot less time than you might have thought. For instance, you may think that you need to have;
- business cards
- a website
- a proposal
- a contract
- shipping all organized
- packaging
- inventory

But when reviewing this To Do List, all of these may not be necessary to sell.

- If you are selling over the internet, business cards may not be necessary.
- If you are selling to referrals or have a product, a website could come later.
- A proposal and a contract can be developed once you get that warm lead.
- Shipping is often taken care of by the customer, especially if they are bigger than you.
- Packaging and inventory don't stop you from selling. Having a prototype could get you some interested customers. Start getting the awareness as early as possible!

Sales are the make or break of many businesses. By starting early you are able to get cash in earlier, can continue to design what you are doing based on customer feedback, and you are starting to build awareness about your company which takes a long time to build.