The best advice I can give to somebody in the technology mold who finds themselves in the business leadership chair is this: learn and delegate.
There are 3 core parts to just about any business today.
1. Technology
2. Business Administration
3. Sales
Odds are if you are on this board, you will be pretty comfortable with #1 or at least be interested enough to learn more.
For #2 there are companies who can help you a lot.
Become a client of a quality accounting firm who can provide you with at least basic guidance on some of the financial side of things.
Become a client of an HR firm when you get to the point of hiring employees. The structure of these companies is worth every penny for a small business. They streamline employee paperwork, act as a co-employer for you, help you with things like employee handbooks and software, allow you to offer benefits as part of a much larger entity and allow you to delegate all of the questions related to this stuff from you directly to experts. They will even advise you if something you are doing could get you in legal hot water. If you get sued, they get sued.
For #3...take a sales class.
Hiring good sales people is important, but I learned far too late in the process that I did not truly understand sales. I wasted a lot of time on people thinking that I knew what I was doing. Sales education is usually a very, very foreign concept to technology focused people.
Even if you aren't going to be doing it, taking a class so you understand that side of the business better will make your life a lot easier.
sandler is by far the best method suited to technical people that I have seen. Ultimately in sandler you do not persuade or pitch. You dont talk about benefits, features, or yourself. "You cant teach a kid to ride a bike at a seminar"
You ask questions to understand the problem and help guide a prospect to a yes or equally good, a no.
Other complementary books are SPIN selling, (where spin is an acronym for types of questions) challenger sales, and getting naked.
They all advocate for a consultative approach to sales where you ask questions vs. pitch.
There are 3 core parts to just about any business today.
1. Technology 2. Business Administration 3. Sales
Odds are if you are on this board, you will be pretty comfortable with #1 or at least be interested enough to learn more.
For #2 there are companies who can help you a lot.
Become a client of a quality accounting firm who can provide you with at least basic guidance on some of the financial side of things.
Become a client of an HR firm when you get to the point of hiring employees. The structure of these companies is worth every penny for a small business. They streamline employee paperwork, act as a co-employer for you, help you with things like employee handbooks and software, allow you to offer benefits as part of a much larger entity and allow you to delegate all of the questions related to this stuff from you directly to experts. They will even advise you if something you are doing could get you in legal hot water. If you get sued, they get sued.
For #3...take a sales class.
Hiring good sales people is important, but I learned far too late in the process that I did not truly understand sales. I wasted a lot of time on people thinking that I knew what I was doing. Sales education is usually a very, very foreign concept to technology focused people.
Even if you aren't going to be doing it, taking a class so you understand that side of the business better will make your life a lot easier.