This week I had the pleasure of attending Salesforce’s Small Business Basecamp in Atlanta, and with a number of recognizable names in tech in attendance (Airbnb, Chase for Business, WeWork, and Square to name a few), there was no shortage of valuable networking and advice.
However, some of the most memorable moments for me came from the two panel discussions—Leveraging Community and City Resources to Grow your Business and Life in the Fast Lane: Navigating the Atlanta Entrepreneur’s World— and the advice for small businesses that came out of the Q&A sessions with the featured panelists. Check out my key takeaways below:
Define your values (and be ready to explain them)
“When we first started the business, I sat down and wrote out the four core values of the company I wanted to create, and they were very personal to me…We do something called Springbot 101 where, after you’ve been a few months in the company, the new hires will sit down with me and have lunch, and we’ll go through what the values mean to me in a real way, and go through our traditions and the unique history of the business.” –Brooks Robinson, Co-founder and CEO, Springbot
‘Culture’ can mean a number of things — from a pool table in the office to how you celebrate each milestone — and much of that will evolve over time. Your values, however, need to be a part of the foundation of your business from the very beginning. Several of the panelists talked about the values they’ve defined for their businesses and how they emphasize them — as well as the importance of showing that they believe in those values and being ready to explain the story and the thinking behind them. Your values can’t be marketing speak — they have to be meaningful and personal to you.
Learn how to recruit — or rather, sell
“When it comes to recruiting, study how sales works. We had to rebuild our engineering recruiting process because we were doing it wrong and I wasn’t getting the top talent that I wanted, and it ended up being a lot like sales because sales is the transference of belief. If I believe that what I’m doing is going to make an impact and that I can help you, all I have to do is transfer that belief to you and make you see what I see — and that’s much the same with recruiting.” — Rob Forman, COO and Co-Founder, SalesLoft
When trying to attract and hire your first few team members, knowing how to sell becomes a critical component. After all, you can’t afford to pay top talent what Fortune 500 companies could, but you need that talent to get your business off the ground. Essentially, you need them to fully buy into your vision, and learning how to effectively sell becomes crucial to that effort.
Be (very) conscious of the environment you create
“For me, one of the key values is celebrating what makes you unique. Your home personality and your work personality shouldn’t differ. If you’re coming up the elevator but leaving part of yourself in the parking garage, you’ve lost half of your talent — maybe even more.” –Brooks Robinson, Co-founder and CEO, Springbot
Those early team members you bring on will have a critical impact on the future of your startup — they will largely help you to define the culture of what your business will become. You need the dynamic of that early group to be just right, with a foundation of trust, a feeling of emotional safety and comfortability, and the right levels of healthy conflict (Rob recommends reading The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni to get this right). Given the enormous impact of those early team members, startups have to be extremely selective with who they hire — and ready to let go those who don’t end up being the right fit.
Love the heck out of your early customers
“You’ve got to nurture the relationship. Let’s say you have customer, there’s a transaction, maybe you get their email — that’s an opportunity for you to grab data and to follow up with that customer. And that’s so important; we can obsess over getting new customers, but we also really have to take care of the ones we have and nurture that relationship.” — Miguel Lloyd, Lloyd Media Group
Never compromise your relationship with early customers in your haste to attract new ones. The importance of these early customers can’t be overstated: they will serve as your case studies, provide you with valuable feedback for improving your product, and often become your greatest evangelists. Nurturing those relationships, staying in front of them, and regularly asking for their thoughts on the direction of your product are critical steps in the development of your business.
Leverage your community.
“For business owners, you go in and you do your work and focus on your business and you live and breathe it… and forget that there are resources [in the community that] you can leverage. Your chambers of commerce, not-for-profit organizations, educational resources, colleges and universities — these are all things you should consider as part of your business plan. As a business, you are part of the community, and you need to know what assets are there.” — Kent Spencer, Manager, Business Retention & Expansion at Invest Atlanta
One of my favorite messages of the event was this: ‘you are not alone.’ Are you part of a small business association? Have you explored the resources available in your community or reached out to your network to ask for advice? Small businesses grow faster and more effectively when they leverage the community around them — whether it’s partnering with non-profit organizations, educational institutions, or networks like the Salesforce Partner Community. Figure out what works for you and start building a community around yourself right from the start.