Selling Innovation

By Kenneth Smith

If you work in a start-up or are planning to launch a new venture and need to get market traction, this guidebook gives you the steps you need to build a sustainable revenue capture process that will build sales and attract investors.

The most important measure of a successful commercial innovation is revenue traction. Operations requires it and VCs & Angels often demand it before engaging. Yet many innovator's efforts end at the point of marketing. Completing the revenue capture process with a solid sales strategy is essential.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kenneth Smith
• Release date: Nov 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311317988

Kenneth Smith

Ken Smith, Co-Founder & Head of Product and Operations at Rejjee. Career entrepreneur & start-up executive, Co-chair of CEO Service Committee for the MIT Enterprise Forum Cambridge.

Book preview

Selling Innovation

A guide to structuring a complete start-up revenue capture process

By Kenneth H. Smith

© Copyright 2013 Kenneth H. Smith. All Rights Reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Ace, without either prior written permission of the Author or Publisher.

Smashwords Edition

with

Gigi C. Wang, Patrick Deane, & Jonathan Yarmis

Introduction by John Harthorne, founder & CEO MassChallenge

Dedication

To Anne Marie,

Whose help and support can never and will never be understated. My partner, my colleague, my muse, my support, my collaborator, my friend, my pal, the love of my life, my wife.

Thank you for everything and forever!

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the significant and insightful contributions of Gigi Wang, and Patrick Deane. Thanks for your support, input, and encouragement.

Thanks also for their input and contributions to Jonathan Yarmis, Mimi Evans, Tammy Kahn Fennell, Jim Geisman, and Sam Bastia.

Thanks also to the many Twitter members whose contributions added to the unique format of this book: @jyarmis, @careerentrepnr, @tones810, @mcritchfield, @SmartStorming, @Promo_Day, @mike_weinberg, @nilofer, @enmedical, @iVidar, @DennisEGilbert, @mchritchfield, @NadAkbar, @RussThoman, @DaveElkington.

Preface

Selling Innovation is a strategic guide for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs working to commercialize their innovations. It is not a text book nor designed as a comprehensive how to. Rather, each section contains guidance based on the combined years of experience among all of the authors to help you optimize various elements of the innovation sales process. It provided structured direction to help steer you towards success based on what we know has worked in the past, and help you avoid pitfalls from those who have tried and failed before.

At the end of each section you will find a question or statement. Combined these create a start-up checklist that you can use before launching your innovation to be sure you have thought through all of the issues related to sales and selling. The list is combined at the end of the book for your reference.

We hope you find it useful and wish you the best of success with your endeavors..

Introduction

By John Harthorne, founder & CEO of MassChallenge

The world needs innovators and entrepreneurs who can sell.

Entrepreneurs are our value creators and problem solvers. Their nimble, high-growth companies create most of the world's highly innovative technologies and groundbreaking solutions. More often than not, it is a startup that first determines how to extract energy from high altitudes, or from the ocean's waves, or even human waste. More often than not, it is a startup that first figures out how to teach kids math using basketball or how to build the most intuitive mobile games. They build off-road wheelchairs, grow farms in freight containers, track migraines with cell phones and draw clean water out of slightly humid air. Take any problem in the world, and you can be certain that numerous entrepreneurs are working tirelessly on solving it, and that a few of them will end up revolutionizing a long-established industry.

Startups are also creating jobs. Early-stage ventures are responsible for virtually all net job growth in the United States, as confirmed by The Kauffman Foundation: Net job growth occurs in the U.S. economy only through startup firms.  Since 1977, established firms have lost 1 million net jobs per year, while startups in their first year added an average of 3 million jobs in aggregate. This trend has spawned scores of innovation centers and business plan competitions as governments, educators and the private sector world-wide work towards supporting this critical part of local economic development.  We need job growth, we need it now, and startups are the solution.

But launching a startup is difficult. Many innovations never get to make that impact and generate those jobs because too many innovators struggle to find the right resources before running out of time.  To succeed, entrepreneurs need access to advisors, talent, suppliers, lawyers, office space, equipment, funding, and other resources. Most importantly of all, though, startups need customers. 

Customers are almost always the single best source of funding and growth. Customers are demanding. They force you to build what they want, rather than investing in the development of a large, complex science project. They keep your company alive and focused and, if they like your product, they buy more. Customer money is the cheapest, most productive form of capital on the planet.

Innovation can provide solutions to many of the world’s most challenging problems. Selling that innovation is what reifies the founding vision, establishes the desired impact and initiates serious growth. 

The world needs entrepreneurs and innovators, and they must be great at selling their innovation. 

Foreword

What would you do without sales? 

The most important measure of a successful commercial innovation is revenue traction. Operation’s requires it and VCs & Angels often demand it before engaging.  Yet many innovators’ efforts end at the point of marketing. Completing the revenue capture process with a solid sales strategy is essential.

Perhaps Steve Jobs' greatest gift was his understanding of the entire innovation lifecycle, including the sales process.  He could envision products that consumers didn’t even know they needed to love.   He was also a consummate and celebrated salesman - and knew the importance of that role.  Success in the innovation economy requires an ability to execute at every stage of the entire lifecycle and adapt to changes in how companies and consumer buy products.

A recent Corporate Education Board study of more than 1,400 B2B customers found that these buyers completed nearly 60% of the purchasing decision – researching solutions, ranking options, setting requirements, benchmarking pricing, etc. – before even having a conversation with a supplier.  In the enterprise marketplace, traditional media/marketing and solution selling