For start-ups, understanding their customers' needs is key to both selling and scaling. In this clip from "The AI/ML Show" on Motley Fool Live, recorded on Feb. 23, Motley Fool contributor Toby Bordelon gets Bob Flores' thoughts on what start-ups should focus on and prioritize and why all start-ups should get in the mindset of their customer groups to figure out how to sell successfully.
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Bob Flores: One of the things I see that not enough time is spent on is, how are you going to sell what you're trying to sell? Most of these things are created, not from years of work from somebody, they're created because somebody had an epiphany, who said, "I think the world needs X." They may be correct. The world does need X. But, you still got to figure out how am I going to market that, which really means how do I convince people they need X when they haven't had X for the last millennium. Why now? Sometimes, things fall in your lap. I'm working with a company right now. I can't tell you who they are. They have a product that has worked in the commercial world for some time and the government had a problem that they put out to the commercial world and said, "We have this problem we're trying to solve. If you think you can solve this problem, please let us know." These guys put their heads together, just a very small company, and said, "We think we could take our product and tweak it just so that we can solve their problem." They told the government that. The government invited them in to do a demo and they very quickly tweaked the product the way they thought it should be tweaked and they went in, did the demo, low and behold, it worked. Now, that's gotten the government very interested in them. But, they still have to figure out, now what? We got this commercial business that we're trying to foster, and now we have the government interested. We're a very small company and this feels like boiling the ocean. This is what people don't think about. The worst thing I see is the companies that say, "Our product sells itself." That's very rarely the case. Very rarely the case.
Toby Bordelon: Yeah.
Flores: That's the No. 1 thing that I see. As I said before in the opening, if you're trying to sell to the government, you need to understand the government and how it works. It's no different than if you're trying to sell to JPMorgan (JPM 0.64%) versus selling to Children's Hospital. You don't sell to those guys the same way. For JPMorgan, you sell differently to than you do to Children's Hospital, and you have to understand that. You have to understand, what do those companies actually need? What does the government actually need? Very few of them will actually go ask. But if you ask, they'll tell you. It's not some big super secret.
