Small-business owners, what are you doing to stand out from the crowd? Each week, we focus on an entrepreneur who has lessons to share that we think will resonate with other small-business owners.

Chris Golec, founder of sales conversion technology company Demandbase, answers our questions:

What are you doing to stand out from the crowd?
The days of buying expensive, often inaccurate lists of sales leads are over. In addition to purchasing sales leads, customers can use our software to build searchable marketing lists that are indexed by industries and subindustries. Demandbase's software also allows users to identify who's visiting their site, which can help generate measurably better results than most online advertising, search, email and traditional marketing programs. We also don't charge for subscriptions, minimums, trial periods or duplicates.

What's the best part about owning your own business?
Giving the talented people I work with a place that they feel good about coming into everyday.

What's the biggest challenge of owning your own business?
Balancing my passion for the business with the practical need to keep investors happy and build value for customers.

Name: Chris Golec
Business: Demandbase provides technology that helps businesses identify, reach and convert sales leads into new customers.
Industry: Technology Services
Location: San Francisco
Year founded: 2006
Number of employees: 25
Web address: www.demandbase.com

What's the biggest hurdle you've overcome?
Getting companies to realize how much money they're losing when they let web traffic go unnoticed. Over 90% of site traffic goes unrealized, according to our internal research. This is a huge loss for businesses -- especially those that spend top dollar on driving eyeballs to their sites.

What's the biggest mistake you've made?
In an effort to save money, I outsourced some programming work to some freelancers who simply weren't able to meet my expectations. Generally speaking, I think outsourcing is much better suited for those times when you have a well-defined product that is not likely to change from day to day.

What's the best business advice you can offer?
Half the battle is figuring out what not to spend your time on. Once you nail down how to prioritize, you can build the company twice as fast -- and for much less money.