Turning your impact startup Vision into Sales: my 4-step method

Julie: 00:00:00

when you're looking for a co founder to do your business development.

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Remember that you can already do a

lot of that business development,

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even if you're not a business

person, do not outsource your sales

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Welcome to Impact Sales Radio.

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I am Julie.

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Join me in exploring how impact startups.

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turn long-term visions

into bootstrapped revenue.

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Let's be real for a second.

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You are a visionary Impact founder.

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You have researched everything

there is to know about the

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system you're looking to change.

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You aim to build a profitable business

as well as an impactful business.

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But that feels far off right now.

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When you don't know your value proposition

yet, you're supposed to get out of

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that research mode and into sales mode.

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This is what every impact

founder struggles with.

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That's what we'll explore

together in Impact Sales Radio.

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What if I told you, you can turn your

research superpower into a sales strength?

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So that you can get sales that

are repeatable or building

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towards your strategy.

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That's called convertible research.

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It's a method I designed

specifically for impact startups.

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Drop your email in the first link in

the show notes, and you'll see the big

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picture of what you need to do right now.

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Warning: no silver

bullets will be provided.

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Thanks for joining us here, and

follow me down the rabbit hole.

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Let's go.

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Julie: welcome to this

episode of Impact Sales Radio.

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I'm Julie, and let's get to it.

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In this episode, we'll go from vision

to an actual sales system in order

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to uncover a value proposition.

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I want to discuss the case of

a social well being startup.

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I won't mention the name unless

they show up in the sponsorship

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reel in a couple of seconds.

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No, I'm joking.

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I won't mention the name to protect

the person's anonymity, also to

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take a bit of creative liberty.

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So if you're listening, Ellis I'm not

specifically talking about your business.

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I'm using it as a source of

inspiration, to draw analogies

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to other startups as well.

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As an impact founder, you are

starting from a specific vision, right?

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I wonder how long this has

been maturing in your head.

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Chances are it's been a while.

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Most founders I speak to are between a

year and a half and a couple of years.

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Some have done 10 years of fundamental

research on the topic, but what joins all

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of you together, dear impact founders,

is that you're Having a hard time going

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from that very deep domain expertise

and that vision that is so clear in

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your head and so inspiring and unique

to turning that into a concrete idea

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that people can actually pay you for.

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That gap is quite large and I

haven't come across any methods

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that help you bridge that gap.

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So I've developed it.

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there's a very important starting point.

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I already mentioned it.

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Your vision, your vision is the most

important starting point and is the

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thing you should never want to lose

because it's the fuel for everything.

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It's the fertile ground it's

the thing that You want to

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get closer to as you progress.

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A vision is a big idea, right?

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It's a perspective.

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It's a point of view.

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It's a statement like I look outside

and I see a world where in my case,

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shiny innovations are allotted and

growth is expected to be a shareholder

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growth, less than a stakeholder growth.

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That to me is a world that I see

it's not a world that I really.

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wanna see, but I see investments going to

cyber trucks rather than solving social

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inequality and I'm just baffled by it.

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I believe that entrepreneurship is

actually a vector for social innovation,

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for social complex challenges to

be solved through new businesses.

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And I wonder what your vision is, if

you have to fill in the blanks and say

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"I look outside and I see a world that"

can you dot dot dot can you fill in that

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statement, you don't have to overthink

it just what comes through now " I

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look outside and I see a world that..."

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if you Then move to, "I

believe in", to a more positive

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statement, a hopeful statement.

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What is that belief?

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You can be very concrete.

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You can be very vague.

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There is no wrong answer.

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There's only yours.

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That's one of the keys in

entrepreneurship, right?

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There's no wrong answer.

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There's only yours.

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So don't try to perfect it.

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But take a moment to think about it.

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"I look outside and I see

a world", dot, dot, dot.

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And then "I believe in..."

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now, if you think you don't have a

starting point, and this is something

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I hear a lot, with this, for example,

with this startup that I mentioned,

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it's like, where do I start when

everything feels equally important?

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Where do I start?

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You start with your vision.

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That's the most important thing.

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And everything else should always

strengthen that vision, not dilute it.

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When you feel stuck with your

idea, it's probably because you

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haven't made that vision land

yet into something more concrete.

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Some startups at this point are

hiring branding agencies, marketing

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agencies, or development partners.

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While all of those have a place for

some startups, usually those are not the

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right Investments to make at that point.

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That assumes that you are completely

correct about your solution.

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So it already leaves no room for error.

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And I've seen countless of founders

that have invested 30 K 60 K whatever

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they had on wasteful activities.

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While I see founders who don't have

the luxury of disposable income being

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much more resourceful, much more frugal

maximizing output with minimal funding,

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no family and friends really available,

let alone fools, so they actually start to

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build something scrappy and crappy, right?

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They're first going to make sure that

they have the customer funding lined up.

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How do you approach that?

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If you have a network, you can start

to sell some things that you assume

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are valuable because they already know

you but that quickly enough dries up.

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In the end, You've done those

projects, you've learned from it

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in some extent, but it's not really

something you can repeat or scale.

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So let's explore that for a second?

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The second part of my method is "System".

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You've tackled your Vision,

the second part is your system.

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The system you operate in and

the system you operate by.

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you might feel as an impact founder

at this stage where you're trying

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to create a solution and make it

stick, that you need someone to help

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structure ideas, execute on them.

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You might be looking for a co founder,

but how do you know what co founder you

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need if the solution isn't clear yet,?

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Unless you have someone who's

willing to figure that out together

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and is not to be put in a box of

a specific kind of developer that

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will work towards that technology.

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You have to be able to

work tech agnostically.

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So how can you do that?

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Same goes for a business profile.

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If they're stuck in a certain

industry, they're going to want

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to hold tight to that industry.

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So if you're finding a co founder, look

for someone who's curious and really

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looking to learn about that industry

together, about the system together.

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Now the main question is "how do I

find someone who really understands

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my vision and can help me?"

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Without necessarily taking over,.

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What level of execution can I afford

as a startup with limited resources?

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And do I need a co founder or just

someone with specific expertise?

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Those are all valid questions at this

point, but the answer oftentimes is

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not to be found into a traditional

business coach or a bureaucratic

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business coach, like someone who with

all due respect, have never been in a

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situation of entrepreneurship before.

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Never been close to a startup

even and start to give advice."

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You should do this.

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You should do that."

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No, whatever form of collaboration

you choose for, you need to be

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able to focus on what you do best.

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What I think you do best is

understanding your system and trying

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to solve problems within that system.

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I see that there might be a step

that you can take yourself before

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you actually define what type of co

founder, what type of team you need.

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For me, that step is the system.

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You are curious about

how to change the system.

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You are great at researching and

analyzing, you've only come this far to

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create your vision by being curious about

that, by researching how it could be.

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So it's only natural for

you to have that strength.

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What if you use that strength in order

to build the essentials of your business

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that you can actually build the rest on?

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So that you don't have to balance those

budget constraints as much, but can

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maybe afford high quality expertise.

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Now the first step you might be planning

on now, and I would congratulate

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you on it, is market research.

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This is the case of the person I talked

to today is, who didn't see the importance

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of understanding the target market.

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They want to refine their offering,

so note that there is an assumed

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solution already, but they struggle to

determine what the best approach is.

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So they're looking at, okay, I

think that I need to launch a

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survey and I need to get that survey

to as many people as possible.

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Now that's a great step, but if you

don't know what your problem is that

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you're solving yet, then a survey isn't

going to get you that information.

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The next action to take

now might not be a survey.

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It might not be that.

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A survey might not give

you the depth of insight.

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we learned that from design thinking, and

that's a method that uses anthropology,

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techniques, and other methods to

empathize with the target and try to

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understand what drives value for them.

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What problems they see, what their

context is, really understand that.

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And nowadays, we put too

much emphasis on tying design

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thinking to problem validation.

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But actually, there's a step before

that is often glanced over as

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something we're not going to do.

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That's empathy interviews.

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As a founder, you have no time for design

thinking, let alone empathy interviews.

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You do have a priority of sales.

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You do have a priority

of recurring revenue.

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So how might we marry those?

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That's the question I pose.

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So if you wonder, is there a real market

for my idea or am I just like trying

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to project my passion onto others?

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Then you might want to see if

you're asking the right questions

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to uncover what companies, what the

people in those companies truly need.

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The question then is a survey going to

get you there, get meaningful insights?

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And my stance on that is very clear.

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It's no.

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A survey is an evaluative experiment,

as we would call it in the business

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design language, and this sounds very

preposterous, but it's super simple.

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You have about 26 different

types of experiments.

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last time I made an experimentation course

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An interview is a form of an

experiment, a survey as well.

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An evaluative thing is where you

basically ask a yes or no question,

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or the scope of your research is to

evaluate whether something is good or bad.

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Opposite to that is a

generative type of experiment.

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A generative type of experiment is

where you try to generate insights,

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ideas, problems, challenges,

empathy that you didn't have before.

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This is where your sales

conversations come in.

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A discovery call should be the first

step of your sales conversation.

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In this call, you get to

ask them what is the system?

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How does it work?

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Now a next step in that if

you're okay, let's do it.

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Let's do generative interviews.

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Cool.

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Cool.

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Cool Let's do it in a way that's

will actually drive my sales.

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Then who are you gonna interview?

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This particular client I spoke to was

hesitating between three target audiences,

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but actually it was only two because

one of them she could rule out with

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just the click of a button basically.

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As soon as I asked her who do you

think this problem Without defining

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what the problem is that she's solving.

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But who do you think has the

most challenges when it comes

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to psychosocial wellbeing?

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Who do you think has the most to gain?

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It was clear that it wasn't startups,

startup founders, like before you're

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a scale up, the biggest problem

is actual business survival, but

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also mental wellbeing survival.

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There's a huge problem there.

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Founder well being is a

massively underrated thing.

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Hustle culture has been

detrimental to that as well.

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I applaud founders who are able to work

less and do actual better, better things.

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But

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in her space, in her perspective,

something in her vision Was linked

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to making a well being policy, which

starts with one employee and it's

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mandatory then and implementing that in

order to be able to attract talent and

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since scale ups need to attract talent

quicker and faster and bigger and Have

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a war on talent going on, raging along.

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It was clear that the scale ups were

the ones that were going to have that.

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The SMEs are the third target group,

but I haven't told her this yet.

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So Alice, if you're listening,

the SMEs are being served already.

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They have the budget to hire

the companies that do the custom

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well-being implementations.

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The group that's being

underserved are the scale ups.

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And this is another thing you're

looking for in the system.

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where is there a lever I can

pull to increase the impact?

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Scale ups are notorious for being

willing to rethink the way things work.

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They get the question from the

people that they hire that are

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usually a bit younger as well.

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They get the question of what do you

do for, what's your wellbeing policy?

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So they're faced with these challenges

much more yet they don't have the

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budget to hire a big expensive

consulting firm, even a boutique

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specialized consulting firm.

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So this part of the market, this

scale up part of the market is

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clearly the market that we are most

curious about, that we assume will

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have a lot to say on the subject.

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Of course, we assume that there

is awareness around well being,

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but she's already validated

that through conversations.

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So one of the things that I notice

when I go to this Vision System Value

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method is that we need to do an internal

round of validation with the founders

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before we actually go to the markets.

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And we can save so much time with that.

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Contrary to what design thinking

and lean startup are trying to

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have us believe "we need to find

all the answers in the market".

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But actually when we're doing impact

startup, we are driven by our desire

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and our purpose and our deep expertise.

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So actually, we hold a lot of the

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creative restrictions in which

we want to operate, we own those.

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So it's a validation of what are our

creative limitations that we want to set.

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And that will make our

solution much more creative.

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It will mean that, unlike others

working on prevention, we will

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work, for example, on hiring.

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Unlike others working on SMEs,

corporates, that's where the money is,

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we work on the ones that are broke,

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and we try to really serve them well, but

maybe we ask them a small subscription.

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And maybe we just go for scale, right?

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We'll see.

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Solution will show itself in due time.

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So that will help solve the question

of what does my ideal customer look

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like and what do they care about most.

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how do you bridge that gap though,

between vision and execution?

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What are small concrete steps that would

actually contribute to that vision and

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to turning that into systemic value?

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The first step is always sales.

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It's always looking back at how

you do it today, how you've done

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it in the past and how you could

do it in a different way tomorrow.

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It's always sales.

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Then we look at the vision,

the system, and the value.

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We've already covered that, but there's

a really big importance in taking small

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concrete steps on the right things than

trying to solve everything at once.

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in summary, when you're looking for a co

founder to do your business development.

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Remember that you can already do a

lot of that business development,

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even if you're not a business person,

even if you're not a person who

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can make that concrete idea land.

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As a founder, do not

outsource your sales.

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You can outsource the tasks, but

not the interpretation of the needs.

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That is something at an early stage

you want to keep close to the chest.

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At a scale up stage, you can expand,

externalize that towards a product owner.

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You can delegate that to a product

owner or a product manager even

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after a while when you have

different products and services.

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But the interpretation of your vision

towards linking that towards the actual

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problem you observe with the people

that you empathize with, linking those

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together into a value proposition is not

something you want to outsource because

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you'll, first of all, you'll have a

"not invented here", type of syndrome.

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And second of all, I met Katrien

yesterday who, after a year and a half,

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came back to me saying okay, so I guess

we won't focus on the legal obligation

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value proposition, which is exactly

what I told her a year and a half ago.

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But obviously, it's not my role to tell

anyone what I'm not an oracle, I might

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as well have been wrong, I probably

said 10 things that were completely

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off the mark, so no one that's gonna

tell you something, you're not gonna

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have internalize that you're not

going to believe that necessarily.

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Maybe you won't even give it importance.

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They probably also won't because

who are they to tell you, who am

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I to tell her that regulatory is

not a good trigger to work on.

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That's a common belief, but there's plenty

of startups that could prove that wrong.

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: 00:21:19

Also, It's not about being right or wrong.

314

: 00:21:21

It's about learning about your

market the quickest you can.

315

: 00:21:24

Who else is going to be able to

do that in the most direct line

316

: 00:21:28

than you, so think about it.

317

: 00:21:30

When is the last time you learned

something about your markets?

318

: 00:21:34

When is the last time you intentionally

designed your operating system

319

: 00:21:38

to learn about your markets?

320

: 00:21:41

How could you change your sales process?

321

: 00:21:45

How could you change your networking

interactions in order to learn

322

: 00:21:49

more about your target market.

323

: 00:21:53

Sometimes the most important

thing is not having the answers.

324

: 00:21:58

It's knowing the right questions to ask.

325

: 00:22:01

With that, I wish you fun in exploring

how you will get to your systemic impacts.

326

: 00:22:06

Bye.