Teamwork Rules

It’s been said the strength of the team is each individual member, but the strength of each member is the team. Finding the right people at the right time takes time, energy, patience and serendipity. When you’ve put together the right team, you’ll have a group of extraordinary people working together toward a common vision using their individual skills, talents and experience. Take your time, a bad culture fit can negatively affect the office environment and detract from the mission. 

Make an Investment

You’ve got a great idea, it’s gained some traction and resulted in interest from various people willing to take a risk and come on board. Chances are, you’re excited because a few short months ago, you couldn’t get anyone to collaborate, much less join the team. Now that you’ve got buzz, how do you gauge their commitment? It may seem counterintuitive but the best way to measure their commitment to your mission is to ask them to invest within the company for equity. You’ll see their true motivation and guarantee their investment goes beyond money to include their expertise, which is often as important as funding, if not more.

Purposeful Networking

One of the best and easiest ways to find like-minded people is to have a lot of conversations with purpose, i.e. head into a conversation with a goal defining what you want to extract from the interaction. I don’t know what the definition of networking is, but I can tell you I have a lot of conversations with substance and purpose to suss out people I want to keep in contact with. Many of our employees came to us by way of candid conversations we had at conferences, round tables and other interactions. As you establish relationships, you’ll know if a person you’re talking to is a good fit for the company now, down the road, or never.

Sales Experience Rules

Don’t let anyone undersell the importance of a strong sales leader and team members. The common belief has always been that a corporate sales leader with proven experience will take you to the promised land. Don’t fall prey to that assumption. Corporate Sales isn’t always a good fit for a startup because the environments are disparate; goals, timelines and expectations vary wildly between the two. Startups move faster, they fail faster and get up and go faster – often, corporate sales leaders can’t keep up. By the time you realize it’s a bad fit, you’ve lost months of potential revenue stream development.