New Business Ideation

Starting a business for the money is a pretty weak motive.

In all reality, if you're going to start a business, you want to start a business that solves problems you care about. You want to feel like you're saving the world in some way. You want to be driven by a fiery passion for solving a problem that you hate.

This method of business ideation seems to work pretty well. I've done it with myself and a couple friends now and so far I really like it. It's a sequenced list of questions that help find business ideas you're passionate about.

• What are you passionate about? (What do you think about / do in your free time?)
• Why are you passionate about it?
• Pick the 1-3 that you are most passionate about.
• What frustrations do you have with those things? (Start taking pictures or video of the problems you see.)
• What problems have you experienced or witnessed? (Experienced is better because you'll be more motivated to solve your own problems than someone else's.)
• Of those things, what is the problem you feel most passionate about solving? Why?
• Now, brainstorm solutions. (This may take a while.)
• Create a solution and sell it.

Mosiah 29:26

Do your business by the voice of the people.

Create an open-source design page for people to create our products for themselves - then we'll fill in the functionality.

(Use wire frames like Lucidcharts.)

Customer-Action-Based Sales Metrics

How to measure sales performance: by customer actions. In the end, what you want is for the customer to take an action (buy, sign up, create an account, etc.). In some sales processes, there are multiple steps that must be taken to get the customer from zero to buying, and the customer must take an action at each of those steps. Unless you have very lazy salespeople, it doesn't make sense to measure their actions, because they should always be doing what's necessary to move a client down the pipeline. (And even if they aren't, that will be shown by bad conversion rates in customer actions.)

An exception to this is the first contact, whether that's a cold call or some sort of referral contact. First contact attempts by the salespeople should be measured because , but beyond that customer action is what matters.

I worked at Qualtrics on the academic sales team for a while, where I made outbound cold calls to professors and attempted to set demos with them. The sales process looked like this:

1. Call
2. Set demo
3. Do demo with professor
4. Get professor to set up a demo with the decision-maker (usually the dean or dept chair)
5. Do demo with decision maker (and then other professors if dean wasn't convinced)
6. Close the deal

You can see that each milestone in the process (minus the first one) involved a customer action. First, a professor had to schedule a time for a demo. Then, he / she had to participate in a demo. Then, he /she had to give a recommendation to the decision maker. And on and on.

At the end of each step lies a customer action, and that's really what should be measured.

http://amacus.net/blog/2011/01/measure-your-sales-productivity-by-your-customers-actions/

Group Accountability Research

Articles / Blogs

• http://freelancefolder.com/5-reasons-every-freelancer-needs-an-accountability-group/
• http://www.aartipaarti.com/2010/09/01/the-accountability-group/
• http://www.clay-collins.com/blog/accountability-group-accountability-groups/
• http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1335457/starting_an_accountability_group_pg2.html?cat=51
• http://www.christianitytoday.com/workplace/articles/issue14-poweraccountability.html
• http://www.c12group.com/

Sales Process Variables

Direct Variables

• Quantity of activities (#)
• Conversion Rate (%)
• Sale Amount ($)

# x % = (deals won) x $ = revenue
OR
#%$ = revenue






Indirect Variables

• Sales Cycle
• Between steps and as a whole process. Shortening the sales cycle will likely produce higher conversion rates.
• Also, shortening the sales cycle will speed up closes only if the sales process is being started fresh.
• Activity Time
• How long it takes to complete an activity. This will affect how many activities you can complete in a given amount of time.
• Position of high / low conversion rates in the Sales Process
• Bad conversion rates should be moved toward the beginning of the process. This will free up time to complete more activities, as the salesperson is not wasting time pushing deals deep into the process which eventually are lost. Ideally, all lost deals are lost at the first step of the process.
• (Conversely, high conversion rates should be pushed to the end of the process.)
• Frequency
• It may be better to spread out certain activities, or to do them all at once, e.g. cold calls every day vs. only on Mondays and Tuesdays

Add: characteristics of a close

• (How client was first found)

• Number of contacts from open to close
• Sales cycle time (between steps and as a whole)
• Activity time

Startup Management

Business Model - My Version

Fear and Focus

My mission president (Lester F. Johnson) is one of the most powerful people on the planet. When he interacts with people, he looks them squarely in the eyes, asks engaging questions, listens intently, and smiles and laughs often. In my opinion, it is the perfect form of social engagement. His intense interest and endlessly positive attitude pull peoples' attention to him like gravity.

And he is fearless.

After spending some time with him at a mission reunion two weeks ago, I learned something about fear and focus: fear is the enemy of focus. They cannot fully exist in the same person at the same time.

I'm not going to go into a definition of fear here, but instead will talk about its effects. Fear has a widening effect on focus. It opens our perspective to be aware of periphery threats that might "attack" us from any direction.

Natural Example

A great example of this is the anatomy of prey and predators in nature. Prey are animals that get eaten, and predators are animals that eat the prey.

Naturally, prey are the more fearful of the two, as they are constantly in threat of being killed by a predator. In order to detect threats, they have typically been outfitted with eyes on the sides of their heads. This offers them a very wide field of vision to detect hungry predators.

Predators, on the other hand, who have far fewer threats, have eyes on the front of their heads. Their field of vision is much narrower, and both eyes are able to focus on the same object.

When watching video of predators hunting, I'm always impressed by their extreme focus - they pay no attention to their surroundings, but instead center their attention on their objective.

Fear equals wide perspective! It requires us to dedicate our attention to detect periphery threats, which reduces the depth of our focus.

Power


One of the reasons President Johnson rocks so hard is that his fearlessness allows him to dedicate extreme focus to whatever it is he's doing. While talking to people, he isn't thinking about what those who are watching the interaction will think. When teaching, he isn't worried about whether those he teaches will think he's crazy, instead he focuses his attention on the objective - to achieve understanding.

He is completely comfortable with himself because he does not allow fear to widen his perspective in order to detect threats of criticism or misunderstanding.

He is utterly focused, unapologetically fearless, and tangibly powerful.

Fear is the enemy of focus.

Accountability Group

Here's the problem with not having a boss: lack of accountability. And why is accountability important? A great summary of the benefits of accountability is found in this quote by Thomas S. Monson:

"When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement accelerates." (June 2004, Worldwide Leadership Training Broadcast)

I've been looking for a solution to this problem (lack of formal accountability) for a couple years now. And this morning I came up with a decent solution. It's nothing new, but it's pure genius. It's a concept called "group accountability". The basic idea is to create a group that meets on a regular basis in which the individuals report their successes, failures, and plans to the group.

This follows the model of corporate america, where the CEO - the one guy who doesn't really have a boss - typically reports to the board of directors. Group accountability!

So I want to create a web app to facilitate this concept. Like right now.

Some rules I like are listed below:

• Reporting occurs every week
• Reporting is 100% honest - dishonesty here is self-defeating
• Reported information is strictly confidential
• Feedback is highly encouraged from the group
• Feedback should be positive and encouraging, while also being honest and unapologetic

Here are a few sites that talk about the benefits of accountability groups and suggested rules:

• http://freelancefolder.com/5-reasons-every-freelancer-needs-an-accountability-group/
• http://www.aartipaarti.com/2010/09/01/the-accountability-group/
• http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1335457/starting_an_accountability_group_pg2.html?cat=51
• http://thefreshxpress.com/2011/02/solutions-for-black-america-accountability-groups/

Passion for Human Performance

These are a few things I'm passionate about:

1. Time structure
2. Goals
3. Key indicators
4. Planning
5. Accountability

My Mission

After all I have done, still nothing has been as important, as impactful, or as joyous as my mission. I still yearn for life to be as it was on my mission...

Focus - extreme focus, extreme discipline, extreme selflessness
Companion - someone to enrich life and share it all with
Work of the Lord - it is hard, but it is so very important. What else matters? And He very actively worked with me.

I want it back!!!