How To Rally Your Team Behind Your Vision, Understanding Customer Development and Generalists vs Specialist

The Startup Help Desk

In this episode we answer questions submitted by founders just like you, including:

• How do you motivate your team around your vision?
• What's the difference between Customer Development and Sales?
• When do you need Generalists or Specialists on your team?

You can submit questions for us to answer on our website https://www.thestartuphelpdesk.com/ or on Twitter @thestartuphd - we'd love to hear from you!
Episode Notes
Reminder: this is not legal advice or investment advice.
Q1: How do you motivate your team around your vision?
Capture “proof” everywhere you can – document it – and share it with the team:

• Proof is your fuel to acquire new customers, hire, and motivate
• Proof = earning new customers, testimonials, existing customers asking for more, case studies
• Collect proof each week and share it across the company
• Nic records a weekly status update video to share with the team!
• Ash suggests not to share every metric, as that can be distracting from the key ones – instead, focus on one (or a select few) KPIs and share those wins with the team
• You will need to pitch all the time – practice your public speaking
• Build the "well of good will"
• Involve the team in company principles workshops and direction

Q2: What's the difference between Customer Development and Sales?

• Customer Development happens before you find Product/Market Fit. It’s the process of interviewing potential customers, learning from them and testing ideas. CD is all about iteration and learning.
• Consider Customer Development to be your compass:
  • Who your customers are
  • What specific problem they need solved
  • How to solve it
  • How to reach and sell to them
• Sales starts after you have clear signal and can start to build a process around selling the product. Sales is about process, reproducibility and optimization.
• Thus, sales is the engine or fuel: once you know who your customer is and are ready to grow revenue, you can add more fuel to the fire with sales.
• Too many companies confuse the two, and start trying to sell the first MVP of their product instead of learning from the market. It’s not about growth until you have a foundation to grow.

Q3: When do you need Generalists or Specialists on your team?
Once you start to grow quickly, you need specialists. Generalists deal well with uncertainty and when you need to do something for the first time. Once you have a playbook that someone can pick up, you want specialists who can make it better.
However, hiring specialists before you have a solid process is a common cause of startup death, since specialists often struggle to go from zero to one.
So, let's talk about signals that you need more specialists vs. generalists. If you’re tracking goals honestly, it should be obvious over a 90 day period. If you observe:

• Generalists missing key goals with steadily less warning and steadily less good ideas to solve
• Internal team friction from their direct reports
• Noticeably distracted by other goals and/or ignoring constructive feedback on how to improve
• This can be a sign that you need specialists for roles.

Where to put great generalists as you scale?

• On the fires
• They usually want to have an impact and are adaptable. Very helpful when dealing with a crisis or serious issue.
• Don’t be afraid to ask people what they want.

As you scale, there are always new areas that need to be developed and built. Generalists can move among those opportunities and be the ones who are trailblazing the next function, area or process.