Hey guys, this is Steli Efti with Close.io.
Creating clear outcomes—good or bad—are the path to success.
Reversely, whenever you do something in a startup, and you don’t create a clear success
or failure as an outcome, you’re fucked, right?
If there’s one thing that I see startups struggle with, it’s not that they don’t
come up with new ideas of things to prove or test, you know, new avenues for growth,
new product features or functionalities—new ways to actually go after customers, but then
when they get started with those, they set certain goals of what success would look like.
They not always set the clear criteria for failure, but either way you say, hey, if we
accomplish this goal, then this was a success.
You go out there, you do the actions, and then you are somewhere in that middle.
You’re in the maybe zone, and the maybe zone is killing you.
The maybe zone is where you didn’t create a clear success or a clear failure.
I always tell salespeople a yes and a no are both great.
Just get them fast.
The thing that’s killing you is the maybes.
The maybe they are going to do it.
Maybe this was not that bad of a project, and maybe if we continue, it might end up
being a good thing.
As entrepreneurs and as startup people and salespeople are very much like that as well—we
are all hopeless optimists.
So we’re always going to look at things more on the positive side than the negative
one, and whenever we do something, and it’s not quite clear that something was a success
or not, more likely than not because we’ve invested time in it and because we’re optimist,
we’re going to try to look for evidence that we should continue doing it, and that’s
usually a bad idea.
What I want you to focus on is whenever you go out there to do anything as a startup,
you want to make sure that you create clear outcomes.
Success or failure: You define both what success looks like and also what failure looks like,
but even more importantly, you define what you’re going to do if you create and outcome
that’s somewhat in the middle.
Too many times people say we’ll try this and we’ll see if it works.
Cool!
If it works, it’s kind of obvious to everybody.
If it doesn't work—if it really doesn't work, it’s going to be obvious to everybody,
but what if you're in the middle?
What do you do then?
Are you going to continue?
Or are you going to stop and why?
Make these decisions before you get started to make sure that once the project is concluded,
you actually know what to do next, and you're not in this weird state where now opinions
and emotions and interpretations will lead the way and influence the outcome of what
happens next.
The same doesn’t just apply to startups in general, but also to sales teams more specifically.
If you're in sales, your job is to create outcomes—yes, no—I won the deal.
I lost the deal.
Both are good.
Optimize for speed and optimize for clarity.
Don’t optimize for optimal conversion and for getting everyone to buy and everyone to
agree and every deal to close because if you try to optimize for that, you're going to
more likely than not, wait around too long on certain deals to push for final commitment
or for the deal to not go through.
You're going to wait around and let the prospect think about it and let them extend that trial
again and then let them tell you that they really want it, but it’s probably going
to be pushed off to the next quarter, or let them just go on and on and on with that indecision,
and it keeps occupying your mind space, and it keeps occupying your pipeline, and it keeps
occupying the ideas and the mindshare of your team, and ultimately, it’s a waste of energy
and resources, which is the least that you have.
You don’t have the time or mental capacity to waste on a ton of deals in the maybe state.
Get to a yes.
Get to a no.
Both yes and no are great.
Maybes are not, so make sure to avoid them and make sure to have a plan for them before
you get started.