Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

SuperMac sold our graphic boards for the Macintosh through multiple distribution channels: direct sales to major accounts, national chains, independent rep firms, etc. But the computer retail channel was a large part of our sales. He had teamed up with a former product manager at P&G to deliver seminars on just this subject.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Seeing Both Sides

JULY 11, 2013

I''ve been thinking a lot lately about scaling sales. . Before this occurs, the sales process is a craft or an art - custom-made by the founder or evangelist sales VP. How do I build a repeatable, scalable sales process that is like an industrial machine - not a crafts project? 1) Enterprise Sales.

Sales 50

Sales Technical Review Software Review B2B 50

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. They looked at their watches, gave our sales guy a quizzical look and left.

Technology 143

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 143

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. Starting a business is too risky. That kicked off this long conversation about how you might try to leverage this evolution of education technology to create scalable impact in places where tuition couldn’t be the driver of growth. It’s too hard.

Cofounder 145

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 145

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. Starting a business is too risky. That kicked off this long conversation about how you might try to leverage this evolution of education technology to create scalable impact in places where tuition couldn’t be the driver of growth. It’s too hard.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. If they’re not busy looking at their Blackberry’s/iPhone’s.)

Customer Development 267

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 2, 2013

We talk a lot about Customer Development, but there’s nothing like seeing it in action to understand its power. Here’s what happened when an extraordinary Digital Health team gained several critical insights about their business model. device makers own customers would stay their customers for 10 years (i.e.

Customer 327

Customer Churn Rate Customer Development Lean 327

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

But we were meeting to talk about sales and marketing. Hiring Channel Sales. “So Why doesn’t this sound like the right thing to do for channel sales?” They thought about it for a moment and said, “Well we feel like we understand how to build things, but sales is something we thought we’d hire an expert to do.”.

PR 319

PR China Lean Channel 319

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

“I’ve been running our company, cycling through Customer Discovery and Validation and the board suggested that I was running out of bandwidth and needed some help in closing our initial orders. They suggested I get a VP of Sales to help.”. I knew where this conversation was going. He’s been in sales for almost 15 years.”.

Startup 317

Startup Business Model Customer Development Bandwidth 317

Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2014

For those who don’t know, I wrote the book Open Innovation in 2003, and followed it with Open Business Models in 2006, and Open Services Innovation in 2011. A startup is a temporary organization in search of a repeatable, scalable business model. When companies want to innovate a new business model (vs.

Startup 330

Startup Business Model Lean Russia 330

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

Extra Lucrative Conversion Advice. Conversion Optimization Services. Conversion Research. It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. I feel like “conversion rate optimization” is in 2013 what “social media marketing” was in 2009.

Customer Development 60

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2014

But businesses are finding that Continuous Deployment not only changes engineering but has ripple effects on the rest of its business model. And these changes may have unintended consequences leading to customer dissatisfaction and confusion. The Old Days – Waterfall Product Development. Lessons Learned.

Continuous Deployment 331

Continuous Deployment Customer Agile Cloud 331

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

But we were meeting to talk about sales and marketing. Hiring Channel Sales. “So Why doesn’t this sound like the right thing to do for channel sales?” They thought about it for a moment and said, “Well we feel like we understand how to build things, but sales is something we thought we’d hire an expert to do.”.

PR 211

PR China Lean Channel 211

Steve Blank

AUGUST 22, 2011

Part of each conversation was getting asked to help them put together a “job spec.”. Don’t start with the candidate (board member x has a great VP of sales he knows, founder y wants this CEO he met at a conference, etc.). Now with the data in front of you, the conversation about hiring can start.

Hiring 296

Hiring Non-Compete Search Customer Development 296

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

You take that money and invest a good portion of it in traditional sales and marketing efforts — including product developers, creative people, and salespeople, all of whom are paid to figure out what buyers want and to say good things about your company — in a quest to get even more customers. Close the sale.

Customer 168

Customer Social Media Retention Canada 168

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

Find and engage customer advocates using a gamification platform that makes it interesting and enjoyable to advocate. Allow customers who identify themselves as promoters on surveys to immediately provide a recommendation on the spot. . This has resulted in dramatic increases in sales.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.” Little Indians and Big Indians At MIPS Computers , my second semiconductor company, I was the VP of Marketing and defacto head of Sales. Isn’t that what I was supposed to do?

Customer Development 284

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 284

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

I suggested the best place to start the conversation is with the 21 st century definition of a startup: A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. That means in their core business, large companies have a series of knowns. and how to price the product.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

What matters is proving the viability of the company’s business model, what investors call “traction.&# Of course this is not at all true of many profitable small businesses, but they are not what I mean by startups.) For a startup, having great sales DNA is a wonderful asset. They are closing orders.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2016

While finding product-market fit is important, getting the rest of the business model right is the difference between and a great demo and a great business. We did do a lot of … customer discovery. We did a lot of talking to customers, trying to understand who really had the need. Do we hire 50 sales people?

Cofounder 120

Cofounder DC Entrepreneur Silicon Valley 120

ConversionXL

JUNE 14, 2021

Your product or service is likely built of many features or components, but which of those do your customers truly value? Asking your most loyal customers why they keep coming back can put your marketing biases to the test. Use these conversations to understand the needs and desires your customers are struggling to fulfil.

Software Review 158

Software Review Audience Differentiation Framework 158

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2017

My engineers say our website is old school, and we need to be on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, my VP of Sales says we’re wasting our marketing dollars not targeting the right people and my board keeps giving me their opinions of how we should describe our product and company. How do I sort out what to do?”. Here’s how.

Marketing 316

Marketing Audience Technical Review PR 316

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2015

How startup ideas are developed and nurtured was the focus of conversations with the latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on Sirius XM Channel 111. Pat was named one of the “80 Most Influential People in Sales and Marketing History” and was twice named Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur of the Year” for both ACT!

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Channel Programming Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Resegmentation means these startups are trying to lure some of the current or potential customers away from incumbents by either offering a lower cost product, or by offering features that appealed to a specific niche or subset of the existing users. We only have 20 customers, and Large Company x has millions.” This is easy to test.

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 206

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

For example, IMVU’s early business model was made possible by Paypal’s easy self-serve and open access payment system. This makes lean supply chains more robust in the face of the unexpected: if sales suddenly dry up, they are stuck with less unsold inventory and simultaneously have less debt to service.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

Shawn immediately said the name I had given the four steps was confusing – I had called it market development – he suggested that I call it Customer Development – and the name stuck. In the Roku case study we’ve chosen three execution branches: (1) delivery platforms, (2) sales channels, and (3) chip platforms.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

It requires separating the product launch from the marketing launch (see Dont Launch ) as well as other staple Lean Startup tactics: minimum viable product, split-testing, customer development and the pivot. Third, SlideShare started holding sales calls with large companies to learn what would prompt them to buy the enterprise version.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

rob.by

MARCH 8, 2012

Whilst the average tech entrepreneur may lack some of the more business relationship, networking, and sales/marketing skills – they still need to have an entrepreneurial mindset, understand financial models, market factors, and how the business ultimately makes money. Business & Technology (18).

Technical Cofounder 42

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Engineering Fractional CTO 42

Rob Go

OCTOBER 27, 2011

I had a maddening conversation with an entrepreneur a few weeks back. The pivot is intimately tied to the core concept of the lean startup: that the goal of a startup is to search for a repeatable and scaleable business model. The goal of any business is to create a sustainable and repeatable business model.

Startup 61

Startup Lean Business Model Search 61

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

The one-page pitch format is also more suitable for SaaS businesses that are constantly testing new ideas. Your pitch is going to cover your strategy (what you’re going to do), your tactics (how you’re going to do it), your business model (how you will make money), and your schedule (who is doing what and when).

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

So conversion rate percentage, of course it can always be higher and we’re doing a lot of stuff to make that higher, but it’s in line with other applications. Jason: Yeah, one percent conversion rate is pretty normal. I have schools and businesses. Now most of the businesses are small to medium- sized businesses.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

Steve Blank

JULY 29, 2013

Its goal is to take the original idea and search for a repeatable and scalable business model - first by finding product/market fit, then by testing all the parts of the business model (pricing, channel, acquisition/activation, partners, costs, etc.). Filed under: Customer Development , Family/Career/Culture.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Advisory Board Customer Development Leadership 335

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

Pricing models, the freemium myth and why you may not be charging enough for your product - Seth Levine's VC Adventure , August 12, 2010 I’ve been pulled into a number of product and pricing meetings recently (for reasons unknown I’ve become the Foundry pricing and productization guy). More tiers = more complication = more confusion.

Startup 191

Startup CTO Hire Cofounder Venture Capital 191

ConversionXL

APRIL 30, 2014

They’re using ecommerce tracking to measure revenue and sales, and they’re using Goals to measure a number of macro and micro conversions. They also want a simple way to combine all of the data in one system that anyone can use (sales, marketing, analysts, etc.). Plus they want to give more employees access to the data.

Analytics 97

Analytics eCommerce Software Review Campaign 97

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

Do that – nothing else but one product / company / focus and get to $1M in sales with atleast $15% net profit. what are the most crucial steps to be taken by a new tech startup when outsourcing major part of the tech to IT firms or outsourcing “product development” eg new social media website project? do something else.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

grasshopperherder.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2011

Q: “What will be your best channel for customer acquisition?&# We’re testing a viral loop, direct sales, and affiliate marketing.&# If I can steal your idea by just hearing it, there is no defensible business model there. But starting a conversation with, "Just sign here" is simply unrealistic.

Cofounder 47

Cofounder NDA Founder Sweat Equity 47

market-by-numbers.com

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Market By Numbers on Twitter | Entries RSS | Comments RSS Market By Numbers High-Tech Marketing and Customer Development Home What is Customer Development? The driving force helps shape technology choices, importance of design, market segment, and business model as well as company culture, growth plan and exit strategy.

San Diego 40

San Diego RSS Lean Elevator Pitch 40