three things you should have before you start your company

Joel Spolsky of joelonsoftware.com has a great post on three things you should have before you start your startup company. He's talking about software companies, but that doesn't really matter because his advice really applies to everyone:

Don’t start a business if you can’t explain what pain it solves, for whom, and why your product will eliminate this pain, and how the customer will pay to solve this pain.

StartupJournal | Sound Advice

Recommended ReadingFor New Entrepreneurs over at The Wall Street Journal's StartupJournal is worth taking a look at. I highly recomend "The Art of the Start" by Guy Kawasaki.

(disclaimer: Kawasaki's book is included with Business Plan Pro, the software product that I work on.)

Small Biz 101: Tips for Increasing Sales - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)

Small Biz 101: Tips for Increasing Sales - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)

Great post over at 37signals for those just getting started and for those of us who need a reminder from time to time.

Why don't sales people listen?

I just got off the phone with a sales person from Webex. We are considering switching from our current provider of web conferencing technology to Webex because of a few advanced features that Webex has, but I had to sit through 30 minutes of demos and explanations before the salesperson would give me pricing.

I know it's an established sales strategy to first show how cool your product is before offering pricing information, but why can't some sales people just listen to their potential customers? In this case, I already knew that Webex is better than what we have now. I told this to the salesperson. The bottom line is that it came down to price because what we have now is good enough. It's not great, but it works. The deciding factor for switching at this point is price, but the salesperson wouldn't give it to me without wasting 30 minutes of my time (and his!)

Bottom line: listen to your customer and give them what they ask for.