John Wall: One thing we found with a lot of entrepreneurs, as they come out of the gate, is they’re trying to get more customers and prospects. The mistake that they often make is that they spend a lot of time talking about the product and its individual features or what went into making the product. It’s much more important that all of your sales and marketing efforts go towards talking about what your company represents and how that view of the world matches the view of the world of the customer. So a Lever portfolio company, Marty’s Local, has represented local produce companies throughout the region, and they are known for offering higher quality products, better tasting just the kind of foods that better classes of restaurants and stores would want to offer. Now a customer, instead of going out and spending a lot of time researching what asparagus they’re going to buy, they know that if they go to Marty’s local they’re going to be able to get a high quality product right out of the gate, because that’s what Marty’s Local stands for.

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