Steve Nielsen — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 05:32:12 GMT

This sure is a common problem. So many people come up with and develop great ideas, but then have a hard time selling their idea into an unfamiliar industry.

I think that there are two ways that you could approach this:

1) You could try and recruit another business partner/co-founder who has a lot of industry connections and is good at selling. My company, PartnerUp.com, was created to help people find co-founders/business partners with specific skills. Or, you could try networking offline to find someone with the skills that you’re looking for. I just posted something on FoundRead a few weeks ago about this. It’s at http://www.foundread.com/view/tips-for-finding

2) You could go into learning mode and find out absolutely everything that you can about the industry that you want to enter. Start subscribing to trade magazines in that industry, visit blogs by people in the industry and comment and build relationships with them, try attending trade shows and buying a few people lunch, and making some cold calls. When making cold calls, I would definitely start with the accounts that would be nice-to-have, but that aren’t critical. That is, try out your sales pitch of a few smaller companies before going to some of the industry giants.

Good luck with your venture! It sure sounds like you’ve got a great idea.

Found+READ: Comments by Steve Nielsen