120 ‘Dating’ Your Customer and Working with the Government with Rivers Corbett
“The go-to of businesses is to go get funding, and there’s nothing wrong with getting funding, but we forget that a key metric for success in business is sales.”
Rivers Corbett is a serial entrepreneur, TedX speaker, entrepreneur in residence in New Brunswick, video author of 13 Fears of Entrepreneurs, host of the Startup Canada Podcast, and co-founder of GoForth Garage for entrepreneurs.
Rivers help entrepreneurs succeed by helping them understand and implement the right formula for building an epic business.
In this episode, we talk about:
Getting funding and selling your products
Selling to the right individual
Building a relationship with your customer
Bringing the entrepreneurial spirit in a bureaucratic organization
Taking care of your mental health as an entrepreneur
Best way to move the economy forward
Making sales all about the customer
Check out the full episode!
‘Dating’ the Customer
My biggest challenge has always been asking for the sale. But I have learned that all sales is is a process of ‘dating’ a customer.
And what you have to do is figure out your value proposition and who is the individual that wants it, and whether they want it to the point that they actually want to pay for it. Once you understand that, then you can start to have a dialogue around how you can ‘date’ together.
If I’m selling food and you’re in the brick business, then what are you doing talking to me? A lot of people sit around and just start talking to anybody. Initially, it is about getting to the right individual that has a need for your product or service.
Being an Entrepreneur in Residence in New Brunswick
Government is starting to change a bit, but a lot of it has to do with having people understand that entrepreneurial culture, having people get an appreciation of the importance of engaging entrepreneurs in policies and strategic decisions.
I suffered from depression during my journey as an entrepreneur, and today, I was invited to speak in front of my teammates [in the government] about the whole issue, and I started off by telling them, “Entrepreneurs, more than anybody, struggle with depression, anxiety and mental health issues.” And if we as a society aren’t supporting those individuals who drive the whole economic engine of our pure existence, then we are just kicking ourselves in the head because these people can’t create jobs, they can’t create innovation.
And so it’s really cool to talk about this with my colleagues because they’re now getting that voice of the entrepreneur, so when it comes to them making the decisions, they’re thinking in a different way.
Mental Health Status of Entrepreneurs
Mental health issues are more prevalent among entrepreneurs.
I went through it twice during my journey and I consider it one of the greatest lessons that ever happened to me because one, I can talk about it, and two, I think I’m going to live longer because I now know how to deal with it. I figured out how to fix my engine and it allows me to be a better entrepreneur. But definitely the stats show that entrepreneurs, more than the average person, suffer from some form of mental health issue.
