Innovation means nothing if it cannot be invoiced. To invoice some thing you need three critical things A Customer,a Seller and most importantly a relevant Product or Service or Solution to sell.

Let’s ask a couple of standard questions:
1. Why do many companies shut down within months and years of starting up?
2. Why do many companies struggle to grow beyond a certain point?

Lets hear couple of standard answers:
1. The company ran out of money to do their marketing activities or operate at low margins.

The product was not accepted by the customers

The reality is, not every company can have deep pockets to acquire customers through expensive marketing campaigns, invest in building really superior products before going to market and finally work at negative margins for a long time till customers get used to their brand.

So what’s the solution. The real solution lays in their ability to find the right customers for their product offerings. This can be done only with genuine sales efforts. This means you need sales persons who understand the products, have an understanding of the target customer segment, prospect and build a database of potential customers from that segment, have a great sales pitch that converts their features into customer benefits, handle customer objections, negotiate and close a sale. And last but not the least, ensure the transaction goes through smoothly and money is collected.

Phase1- Initial Years:
This is a stage at which many companies struggle and break because, due to lack of sales efforts from the founders, the cost of running the company starts weighing down the shoulders and soon with

dwindling funds and no sales, there would be no option but to shut down. Many of the founders go back to a job at this stage.

Not every company can invest in a sales team right away. Nor should they invest in a sales team straight away, unless it is in volume B2C space. Initially, it has to be the founders themselves who have to spend time on business development and acquire customers. Who better than the founders to talk about their company and products passionately and convince the customers? Also this is a phase when, basis customer requirement, the founders get to know the true value propositions of their product offerings and are able to fine tune their offerings to suit what customer actually needs. Also with real customers, real revenues, the cost of running the company is taken care of.

Phase 2 - Middle Years
This is a stage at which the company has hit a plateau and needs sales efforts beyond that of the founders. This is a stage at which the company needs an a core sales team for reaching out to customers, channel partners, alliances, franchisees etc. depending on its line of business and growth plans.

While it is important and glamorous for many companies to talk about their products, PR and marketing campaigns, what really makes or breaks a company is their ability to sell their products to the right target customers

At this stage the founders have to spend time on hiring and creating the core sales leaders and let them start handling customers and transactions. These are the leaders who in later years will build and run larger sales teams under them, when the company wants to ramp up its growth.

Phase 3 - Growth Years
This is a stage at which the company needs an expanded sales team with more members to reach more geography,industry verticals and handle product specializations. Depending on the company size, there may be requirement of mid level leadership roles (managers/team leads/supervisors) to handle front end sales teams. There may be requirement of different type of sales reps for Market Development, Alliance Program Management, Franchise program management etc. This is also the stage at which company has to invest in setting up sales processes to monitor, manage and review funnel/opportunity pipelines, get more accurate sales forecasts, do CRM etc. This is also the stage at which the company has to invest in sales trainings and coaching to get their sales team into top shape and keep them there.

In conclusion, while it is important and glamorous for many companies to talk about their products, PR and marketing campaigns, what really makes or breaks a company is their ability to sell their products to the right target customers. To do this, the founders need to become sales persons themselves and subsequently build effective sales teams. Selling makes all the difference between winning and losing.