As an entrepreneur or CEO you have to make the decision what kind of company you want to run – a family business which can go on forever without ever becoming a market leader or a company which can achieve explosive growth and become the visible market leader in a market segment.

If you want to achieve explosive growth you can’t accept (too) long learning curves. There are many reasons why building the company strategy around the skill set of existing people will not create a successful company:

• When people don’t have the right skills and they don’t risk losing their position, failure will be accepted from the beginning
• This creates a company culture of “finding the right place for people who don’t deliver results” instead of a result driven culture
• The company loses its competitive advantage if it takes employees too long to move up the learning curve or people are just not capable of doing their jobs
• New people bring new skills and new contacts/networks into the company. If you don’t hire new people, you are missing out on this
• Entrepreneurs / CEOs think more about people than about their strategy
• Companies will lack in execution – poor execution is the number one reason why companies don’t take off

To actively manage human resources and put the right people with the right skills and experience in every position is extremely important and must have a high priority!

The action points should be:

• Make sure that your company has a “plan” how to grow
• Define the necessary skill sets to make this “plan” happen
• Create job descriptions for each key position, including well defined, measurable objectives/goals
• Match the existing team to this skill set
• Reach out to hire the right people with the necessary skill set
• Set and control the defined goals
• Replace employees who don’t deliver

Entrepreneurs / CEO who don’t let emotions, friendships and history affect the staffing process will be more satisfied, have more time to develop strategies and in the end will be more successful.

See also “Fire Fast – hire slowly”

What does this mean?

-       some product features will always be missing

-       sales will report that they lose deals because of missing features

-       product roadmaps are feature and not benefit driven

-       there will always be a competitor with more features for a better price

The “pure” follower company will fail – sooner or later. Me too is me dead!

Put the following question in the center of your thinking “What unique value should this company bring to the world?” If you and your team can’t answer this question, then close your doors!

The best way to identify your unique values is by talking to your customers and partners. Do everything to find out the real reason, why they bought your product – and what new values your product can bring to the market. Go visit your partners and talk to them. They and their customers are using your product. You can be sure that these conversations will give you new insights into your market and maybe open new market segments.

I always tell my team – everyone from sales to engineering – “Think end2end”, which means that they should understand our business, the benefits we want to create for the user and they should not live in their little box.

As an entrepreneur, you need to spend time with every person in your company who has customer contacts or can develop technological advancements. Often, competitive advantages in a product are hidden and not marketed, because “engineers just included the function” and no one in the company knew about it or understood the full meaning. But if you talk to customers, partners, your support, R&D, and sales people, they will tell you some “eye-opening” stories.

Summary:

- Analyse your market and understand your customers (this means talking to them and asking them lots of questions) – why do they need a product like yours?

- Don’t think in features – think in benefits and value them (in US$)

- Don’t let support define your next release – think in customer value and not in solved issues/closed support tickets

- Install a product marketing process (a great source for product marketing is www.pragmaticmarketing.com)