Agile California Engineer Sales 
Steve Blank
MAY 23, 2016
NYU Engineering Commencement Speech. Thank you for the opportunity to address you on your graduation from this esteemed engineering school. When I retired after 21 years working in 8 startups, I was invited to be a guest lecturer at the business school at the University of California Berkeley. Let me give you an example.
Steve Blank
AUGUST 31, 2009
After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide useful guidance in activities outside the building – sales, marketing and business development. Product Development Diagram 1. Where Are the Customers?
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Steve Blank
AUGUST 23, 2010
At times I’ll do what I consider an extension of teaching; a two-day Customer Discovery/Validation intensive session with a large corporation serious about Customer Development at my ranch on the California Coast. We’re Not Here for a Sales Call. But we are not here for a sales call.&#.
Steve Blank
JUNE 25, 2009
Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. Their engineers hated us. They looked at their watches, gave our sales guy a quizzical look and left.
Both Sides of the Table
NOVEMBER 1, 2009
Our sales guys were on the front line and heard what they needed to win deals. He decided that our largest customers would be involved in the setting of our priority lists (we did some of this internally in the early years but we saw it mostly as a sales process). The Outside In organization had a one-way flow.
Steve Blank
APRIL 9, 2009
But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. To do that we will create end-user demand and drive it into the sales channel, educate the channel and customers about why our products are superior, and help Engineering understand customer needs and desires.
Startup Lessons Learned
SEPTEMBER 13, 2011
By learning to be rapidly responsive and agile. Thanks to Michael Marasco and the Farley Center for Entrepreneurship at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering, we'll be hosting this event at Northwestern University's Thorne Auditorium on Chicago Avenue by the lake. So how is it best to deal with uncertainty? Register here.
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