Entrepreneurs are visionaries and desire to change the world. They want to disrupt industries and make people’s lives better. They begin with their grand vision and work towards a solution. The problem is the focus when developing a solution. A fresh entrepreneur’s vision can branch in too many directions during the creation of the solution and the construction of a value proposition. Evan Addams was very insightful when he realized his company NoWait had a singular, enormous value that addressed a major pain. He saw the pager problem, the costs involved and zeroed in on that. Despite the opposition from his startup co-workers, they all came to realize that focusing on this singular value was leading to an excellent sales strategy that addressed a major concern for most restaurants. It wasn’t the fancy A.I, metrics, or user interface that drew in restaurant owners, but simply a problem with the table pagers they currently had. The temptation for an entrepreneur is to drone on and on about all the features their product offers, but in reality, this can just put a potential client to sleep and never move towards resolving their problem. A great entrepreneur can appreciate the hard work they put in, but be flexible to allow the customer to determine what makes them great and develop that. This requires humility, adaptability, and a strong work ethic. Ultimately, this is what alters the future of companies and makes or breaks their success.
BoweryJE22
I really liked how you used Evan Addams to explain your post! He is a great example of selling your time and yourself rather than selling the actual product. He knew his product worked and he knew it would be great for a lot of restaurants, but he was willing to sell his time, energy, and personality in order to close the deal. Really great post!
I really enjoyed having Evan come in and talk about his history with different start-ups. But what i found most interesting was how he used his hard work ethic to try to sell his product. By going in and helping restaurants he showed that he was committed to helping them and I believe that’s how he made his sales.
Great blog post. I also enjoyed hearing Evan speak in class. He offered valuable insight and practical advice for anyone pursuing a career as a salesperson or an entrepreneur. I also completely agree with your premise that humility, adaptability, and a strong work ethic are the driving forces of success in business.
A lot of times as a entrepreneur you have to be your own driving force. So having humility when you do things right, adaptability when things go wrong, and work ethic for every moment in between is huge in becoming a successful entrepreneur.