Sudhanshu Ahuja

Talk to as many people in your market as possible irrespective of the channel. Reach out for conversations over coffee meetings. When you meet people in person, share with them about your expertise and offering but even more, ask them about theirs. Be a great listener. People will remember you a lot more if you are a great listener. Make sure to make yourself memorable by either being funny, smart, peacocking or just having a great story to tell. Find out what works for you. The worst is to be ignored. Be bold and push your boundaries. You're on a mission!

One of the most effective ways to build credibility is to name-drop! Mention companies and people you have worked with and for. Demonstrate that you are a part of the community in this area and are at the forefront of that community's development. Reference topics/conversations you have had with these people and share the latest thinking in the area throughout your pitches. Always be looking for ways to add value through your expertise and knowledge even though your service or product may not be a great fit. Offer to introduce people in your network. A bonus is when people who are mutual contacts mention you to the prospect. One way to make this happen is to setup sales meetings through referrals. That also gives you a ready ice-breaker

Clear thinking about your goals will help you stay motivated for your niche business. The only reasons to be in a niche market are: 1. You understand it better than anyone else, 2. therefore, you can build a better offering and build a moat, 3. therefore, you can sustain the business profitably. If you can't run the business profitably, while paying yourself, then you need to be realistic and experiment until you find product market fit in another niche. If you're truly ambitious, you think of your niche as a beach-head and plan to add more niches and grow your TAM. If you are happy with a profitable niche business that gives you a good life, then master your niche and expand your offering until you close off gaps where others can enter.

Wherever possible (outside of your core differentiation), don't reinvent the wheel. Keep your mental bandwidth free for identifying game-changing opportunities. 1. Find best practices and implement them. e.g. you don't need to reinvent sales processes. 2. Benchmark to competitors. Find out what's working for them. It’s free R&D. Make sure you match up otherwise your differentiators will fall flat. 3. Until you have a solid run-rate business for your off-the-shelf product, don't go after enterprise sales. 4. Be prepared to customise for enterprise customers and leave customisation to third party system integrators as much as possible. 5. Consider growing in a new big market by offering your most scalable offering via partners.

One of the hardest things to identify the niche to focus on and make sure it's a big enough niche to build a real business. This is before you start building out adjacent niches and grow the TAM eventually. The best thing to start with is to continuously and scientifically test your value proposition pitch with a certain number of prospects (at least 10 each) across multiple high probability segments (industries and company sizes). When the pitch starts to resonate with a certain segment, you've got something. Then you dig deeper into that segment and can start to identify signals that indicate a high conversion rate. Next, build those signals into your qualification process. With this, you have a strong foundation to start scaling.

Just giving people the opportunity to speak up is not enough. To make sure 'involvement and empowerment' is not just a tick-the-box exercise: 1. Make sure there are a variety of ways people can express their view on a given topic - in physical meetings, on slack, on email or in informal settings. This will ensure that everyone has the opportunity to express themselves in a setting and mode they are most comfortable with. 2. Prod people, especially when they tend to be less expressive. Sometimes, the least expressive people have the most thoughtful views. Beware of just going with the loudest voice in the room. Encourage people to speak up. 3. Give credit. Positive affirmation helps encourage future contributions.