Therapists don’t tell you what to do. Rather, they ask probing questions that get you to\u00a0discover for yourself what is true for you, your situation, and what you want. You’re smart. You’ll make good decisions.\u00a0But you also get bogged down in daily minutiae and putting out fires, meanwhile missing the big picture. That’s where this piece comes in: To splash cold water on your face, forcing you to face reality and continue to defend or change the important choices inside your business.<\/p>\n What follows is your startup therapy session. Having to think through and answer these questions forces you to identify what you need to do\u00a0today to seek profits and growth.<\/p>\n In one sentence, what does your product do and who buys it? And in one sentence,<\/strong> <\/strong>why<\/strong> <\/strong>does someone buy your product?<\/strong> If you have an answer, is it because you have\u00a0hard evidence that this is how your customers perceive you and why they give you money, or just because you\u00a0believe it? “Evidence” means emails and Tweets and testimonials that use those words exactly; otherwise you’re likely interpreting their feedback to match your expectations. (I find myself constantly guilty of this disconnect.) If you don’t have evidence,\u00a0it is OK to have a hypothesis but you should be concerned about collecting proof and disproof.<\/p>\n If you do know the answer, these two sentences should drive your marketing efforts. If these sentences aren’t on your home page,\u00a0why the hell aren’t they?<\/em> Is there anything else more compelling to potential customers? At the least, these represent the themes that drive your marketing campaigns.<\/p>\n What one thing is most responsible for preventing sales?<\/strong><\/p>\n Do people not know you exist? Is it pricing? Not enough product features? Unorganized sales strategy? The look-and-feel of website? Something else?<\/p>\n Most little companies aren’t honest about this, yet it’s possibly the most important question you could ask. For example, I’m an engineer, so my first answer to “Why don’t you have more customers?” is almost always: \u00a0”Because we need this feature.” You hear some potential customer say, “we will buy if you do XYZ” so you conclude that if you implemented XYZ people would start breaking your door down.<\/p>\n But is that really the case? If you added one feature and\u00a0maybe satisfied that one customer (assuming they wouldn’t ask for a second thing – which, in my experience, they usually do), would that get you 100 more sales? For those hundreds of people who downloaded your software, but never bought \u2014 is the reason “not enough features?”<\/p>\n For the hundreds of thousands of people who never came to your website in the first place, or hit the front page and left after three seconds, is the solution “more features?”<\/p>\n When you honestly ask yourself this question, it will naturally lead into things you can do right away to get more people to the site, into a trial and\/or into a sale. Don’t just rest on what comes easiest.<\/p>\n What’s one thing you could do to get more feedback from customers, potential customers or sales you’ve lost?<\/strong> To get the ideas flowing,\u00a0here are eleven ways to get more feedback<\/a>, most of which take less than a day to implement.<\/p>\n If you had zero revenue from now on, on what date would you run out of money?<\/strong><\/p>\n The first thing this does is force you to nail down your monthly expenses and accounts payable. Second, you know the length of your fuse even in event of disaster (if you have revenue) or if you never manage to land a customer (if you’re just starting out).<\/p>\n More than that, knowing your “padding” as I used to call it is helpful in making decisions like “Can I afford to try this Risky Expensive Thing,” such as\u00a0making your first hire<\/a> or trying a $20,000 media blitz. Whenever you’re contemplating a new expensive idea that\u00a0could be awesome but\u00a0could<\/em> be\u00a0setting money on fire, your fuse date helps you know how much\u00a0time<\/em> you’re risking \u2014 time to recover if your bet doesn’t pay off.<\/p>\n Finally, knowing “the day my business could die” helps focus your attention on activities that bring in revenue.<\/p>\n If someone handed you $100,000 today, how would you spend it to maximize future<\/strong> <\/strong>profits<\/strong>?<\/strong> Sometimes the “thing you could do” is so compelling, it might mean you should raise a small angel round or consider debt. Typically it’s best to get by with minimal debt and investment, but if the “thing you could do” is transformative, you might reconsider.<\/p>\n Think about these. We\u2019ll do a follow-up session next Friday\u2026<\/p>\n![\"lucy\"](\"http:\/\/www.stoth.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/91086_lucy-234x300.gif\")
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\nThese are surprisingly difficult questions. The shorter and more precise your answers, the more you understand why you exist. If the answer is: \u00a0”I honestly don’t really know why people give us money,” that’s something to remedy immediately.<\/p>\n
\nYou already know that external feedback is the only way to empirically determine how to build products people want to buy. Maybe you can’t drop everything to solicit feedback (although folks like\u00a0Eric Ries<\/a> say you should), but surely it’s worth one day every month to go out of your way to collection information from the field.<\/p>\n
\nThis gets you to\u00a0crystallize\u00a0what cost-centric activities would most help your business. We get caught up in\u00a0free-but-takes-tons-of-time<\/a> marketing and development activities \u2014 and most of the time that’s a good way to think \u2014 but sometimes it’s still true that “you have to spend money to make money.”<\/p>\n