Do You Have Any Sales?

Every friday I watch ABC's Shark Tank, a show where budding entrepreneurs try to convince five multi-millionaire investors (the Sharks) to invest in their ventures. Almost without exception, the question that comes up after the entrepreneurs have delivered their pitch is: do you have any sales? No matter how good or innovative the idea, or how creative or entertaining the pitch, if the business has no sales the next words you'll most likely hear from the Sharks are: "I'm out!". What the Sharks understand is that good, or even great ideas are worth very little without execution. In the course of our daily grind, we're confronted with hundreds of ideas. Lack of ideas is seldom the problem. The challenge is to know which ones we can execute successfully. To help us choose, we need to develop some simple metrics (emphasis in simple). For example, we could assign a numerical value to several different dimensions like: expected payback ($ and timeframe), degree of difficulty, and resources needed (time, people, money), and pick those ideas with the highest "figure of merit". The metrics you use in your business may vary, but the idea is the same. From then on, as Nike says, it's "just do it".
By Mario Sanchez Carrion