Accelerating sales is a compelling need. Early sales may prove hard to close and all sales are ‘good sales’. It’s essential right from the start to investigate and prioritise all available direct and indirect routes to market, activating journeys to a sale closure from an understanding of customers’ buying cycles. As market awareness of your offers grows, focusing direct activities on key accounts will help maximise efficiency and return on effort.

Running a start-up hardware technology business of, say, 6-10 people that turns out a few pilot solutions is challenging, but delivering hundreds & then thousands of solutions whilst maintaining operational end to end quality control brings new challenges, and methods used to date will no longer suffice. New staff and new teams (including external partners and suppliers) will apply new fit for purpose ways that need embedding and trouble-shooting.

Once your Product/ Market Fit is confirmed, it doesn’t mean you will automatically be successful at selling. A ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach doesn’t always work because different customers can have different needs. Differentiating your offers and business models by market segment to create more value for customers than your competitors’ offers means being able to charge more for them. Sustained differentiation is a way to stand out over your competition.

It is important to start by clarifying where your business will be at time of the exit, and what is your exit strategy. Then, the business journey of how to get there, with its different stages of growth, should be clearly outlined as Commercial and Technology Roadmaps.