The Blade

I recently spent two days hiking, fly-fishing, and talking business in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains with Lee Demby, successful co-founder of Boardroom Insiders, which provides sales professionals with high-quality profiles on more than 8,500 executives. While trekking up and over 6,000-foot Grandfather Mountain, near the summit, we stumbled upon eerie wreckage of a 1978 single-engine plane that killed its pilot. The pilot was flying in whiteout conditions, didn’t have proper instruments to navigate, became disoriented, and smashed into the mountain. The wreckage is a cruel reminder of the difficulty of navigating when you can’t see what’s ahead.

A journey with no roadmap

One of the most difficult aspects of starting a new business is navigating blindly – feeling as if you’re in whiteout conditions. With little data and history to help you, you’re forced to make educated guesses about which processes will work well, and which ones won’t. You want to avoid crashing into the side of a mountain.

During our trip, Lee and I were facing this dilemma ourselves. We were trying to answer the simple question: What’s the most efficient, effective method for Boardroom Insiders to get new customers? Boardroom Insiders already names Citrix, Microsoft, and Cisco as a few of its marquee customers. But how can Boardroom Insiders grow even faster? We contemplated trade shows, partnerships, cold calling, marketing campaigns, and an array of other ideas. Trouble was, as a new firm, Boardroom Insiders has only so much evidence as to what has worked in the past. Mind you, Lee’s one of the sharpest, most calculating founders I’ve known, so the process is clearly difficult.

Here are some tips for navigating your own start-up in whiteout conditions:

• Don’t shy away from the challenging conversations: Finding the best answer to problems isn’t supposed to be easy, so devote the time and energy needed to dig in with your partners and advisers and figure it out.
• Seek out and “calibrate” the advice of experts: I wasn’t the only person from whom Lee sought advice. He’s chatting with dozens of experts. “I calibrate each conversation based on what I know about the person’s background, experiences, and biases,” Lee told me.
• Measure, measure, and measure: Right from the start, measure and document as much as you can because the data will be useful later. Use CRM systems or other sales automation tools to track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as sources of leads, costs per lead, conversion rates, cost of sales, and other applicable stats.

Taking these three steps opens up the clouds and provides you some instruments to better see where you’re going.