“La Scapigliata” by Leonardo Da Vinci.

The great artists of the world go to extraordinary lengths to produce work that is simple, flawless and natural. Leonardo Da Vinci was once quoted, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”. You don’t immediately think of the sacrifice made to produce great art.

During high school I played the trumpet and subsequently studied at the Qld Conservatorium of Music for 2 years. Playing the trumpet requires physical work in technique, breathing and control. But the greatest artists like Maurice André and Wynton Marsalis would make the trumpet appear easy and effortless. They reached that level through sacrifice and hard work.

A similar thing could be made of sales for the start-up. As the Start-up CEO you have many challenges:

  • Being the face of your organisation
  • Keeping disparate teams together
  • Convincing potential customers that you can solve their problems
  • Having enough finances to keep your business from falling off the cliff
  • Putting business processes in place to achieve efficiency

Quite simply, you need to make it easy for customers to buy your products.

You do not want to make your customers purchase/procurement experience difficult and frustrating.

“Vendors making purchasing difficult” is all too common.

As a start-up CEO you have the opportunity to make things different. It will take hard work and sacrifice.

A good example is Amazon’s 1-Click Buy Process. The process was patented and is used by other e-stores around the world – including Apple. Previous to this users needed to add items to “shopping lists” and then go to the “checkout” where payment details needed to be entered (and re-entered on future purchases). Unfortunately many online stores still use these Neanderthal steps.

If you can implement this into your business process, your sales will accelerate and to outsiders it will appear effortless!