Successful Enterprise IT ISVs Include Sales and Marketing ...

The technology industry does not promise entrepeneurs immunity from the infection that threatens 49%, or more, of legitimate small businesses started here in the United States of America ? likely demise within the first 5 years of business activity. This figure is an approximation of specific data presented in a paper, ?Examining the Credit Access on Small Firm Survivability? (http://www NULL.federalreserve NULL.gov/pubs/feds/2012/201210/index NULL.html), which was published online on February 24, 2012 by the Federal Reserve Board of the United States. For our purposes, a legitimate small business is one with assets valued in excess of $0, or annual sales in excess of $1000.00.

Nevertheless, technology entrepeneurs often maintain an opinion that ostensibly superior engineering, alone, can provide the impetus required to propel a business notion into a viable organization that can quickly achieve self support and, later, deliver handsome returns on efforts made to its owners. This opinion also supports an equally dangerous assumption that it is perfectly fine to pin the success or failure of a business venture on a ?solution without a problem,? meaning a technical product/service/integrated solution that may exhibit quite elegant features, but fails to address any palpable market requirement.

Both of these features of failure:

1. excessive confidence built on nothing more than an assumption that engineering, alone, will make a business notion into a winner and
2. dedicating resources to developing products that are not requested by markets

can do enough damage to lead business owners to cease activity if left unchecked.

In fact, these ideas stem for a pervasive under estimate of the importance of marketing and sales management to the success of any type of business in the United States. It is of no material importance whether or not marketing and sales expertise is delivered by a business entrepeneur, or by his/her management team. Regardless, understanding the principles of marketing, including:

• business positioning
• product marketing
• and marketing communications

and sales, which, for enterprise IT ISVs must include a thorough mastery of selling

• products/services/integrated solutions to a complex set of buyers
• in an entirely ethical manner

must be present, or else the likelihood of business failure will be quite high. Despite lots of consternation, tech entrepeneurs will need to fully assimilate the mandatory nature of provisioning this type of expertise if a business notion is to prove successful.

If you understand that your business notion requires a level of marketing and sales expertise that you either do not possess, you need to address this deficiency as quickly as possible by either adding strategic partners, or hiring management staff. If time is an important consideration, then you ought to look to temporary resources to fill these gaps in your business plan.

IMB Enterprises, Inc. is certainly capable of providing you with resources that can fill these roles for your business. Our retained services (3 mos minimum) start at $3200.00 per month. Please contact us to learn further. You can call Ira Michael Blonder at +1 631-673-2929 to further a discussion about our services plan. You may also email Ira at imblonder@imbenterprises.com.

? IMB Enterprises, Inc. & Ira Michael Blonder, 2012 All Rights Reserved

Source: http://www.imbenterprises.com/startup-business/successful-enterprise-it-isvs-include-sales-and-marketing-management-in-the-executive-team/

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