Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. Starting a business is too risky. This is a perfect example of why it’s important to talk to customers. Somewhere along the line, however, Michael and his co-founder stopped listening to customers. Our revenue model was wrong.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. Starting a business is too risky. This is a perfect example of why it’s important to talk to customers. Somewhere along the line, however, Michael and his co-founder stopped listening to customers. Our revenue model was wrong.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 24, 2017

by Tim Conder, VP of Customer Success at Bolstra. While Discovery is incredibly informative for a XaaS vendor, it’s important to remember that it’s a moment of vulnerability and truth for a customer. Discovery typically happens during the sales process and again once a customer is handed over to Customer Success.

Sales 113

Sales Customer Sales Cycle Vertical 113

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 16, 2011

Freshdesk First, Girish Mathrubootham from Chennai, India, pitched Freshdesk , a SaaS company that provides small and medium businesses with on-demand customer support software that offers multi-channel social support. Freshdesk introduces itself as a kind of Salesforce.com for customer support so to speak.

India 123

India Bootstrapping Non-Compete Entrepreneur 123

View from Seed

MARCH 3, 2015

The sales team was still figuring out who we should sell to and how, so they would call everybody in an effort to figure out how the sales process worked, who would close, and who would go on to become a happy customer. But marketing should always be ahead of sales to alleviate pressure. Should you do that at all?

Marketing 120

Marketing Sales Cycle Startup CTO Hire 120

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 9, 2012

TLDR: Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits , authors of The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development are back with a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur. It took the idea of Customer Development and made it accessible to a whole new audience. Market segments drive your business model. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK.

Entrepreneur 167

Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. But here’s where a truly great sales artist comes in.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Duct Tape Marketing

APRIL 18, 2024

So the thing is, those frameworks, it helps you organize a working and functional business model, but it's not a business model and it's not a profit model, and it's not your pricing model, and it's not the structure for what agreements you create with your team, with your clients.

Framework 62

Framework Sales Cycle Sales Hiring 62

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 20, 2018

As a result, argues Andrew Chen , it’s becoming more expensive to acquire customers. A go-to-market (GtM) strategy is an action plan that specifies how a company will reach target customers and achieve a competitive advantage. ideal customer). customer acquisition process and channels). Target or enemy (i.e.

Marketing 289

Marketing Sales Cycle Acquisition Sales 289

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

Next, Umakant Soni discussed Vimagino.com , a software for Web-based Q&A support to engage customers better on sites that are trying to draw people in and convert them into customers. Her upcoming campaign of reaching out to 100,000 moms will be one of the first concerted efforts to actually test her business model.

India 114

India Silicon Valley Incubator Bootstrapping 114

ConversionXL

JUNE 2, 2022

Account-based marketing is an approach where marketing and sales work together to nurture target accounts and convert or retain customers. Sales finds aligned accounts and works with marketing to create customized journeys. This required more product evangelism and customer wins. What is account-based marketing?

Customer 98

Customer Marketing Channel Acquisition 98

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

It included one firm who I asked not to call Salesforce.com as a reference (they were our largest pilot customer) and in their kindness they called Marc Benioff (the CEO) and asked his opinion. I thought, what would I do if I was trying to sell to a customer. Page 4: Business Model. Page 3: Competition.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Term Sheet San Diego Viral 274

K9 Ventures

AUGUST 13, 2010

In fact, at the time (1996-1997) we offered both a downloadable product, that our customers could install on their own servers, and a “hosted-offering”, which came to be known as “On-Demand”, then the “ASP” (Application Service Provider) model, and today we call it “SaaS” (Software as a Service). Today, we call that an “Embed-Code”.

Revenue 72

Revenue Developer Java Customer Development 72

Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

SEPTEMBER 13, 2011

You can check out part one of this series here: Part 1: Which Is The Best Business Model For Your Startup – B2B Or B2C? B2B” – means that you are selling a product or service to other businesses. What Is “B2B&# ? Ex2: Selling office equipment to companies who wish to upgrade their existing furniture.

B2B 105

B2B Business Model B2C Agile 105

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 11, 2013

Whenever there’s a complete disruption of the business model, it means that the underlying rules for that vertical have dramatically changed. Just adding a website to now offer books for sale will not suddenly make an offline bookstore a serious competitor to Amazon.

Sales Cycle 122

Sales Cycle Business Model Aggregator Vertical 122

A Crowded Space

AUGUST 27, 2014

There is a new trend emerging which combines two of the most beloved business models in tech. . SaaS (software as a service) models are very well understood and straightforward. A customer pays a monthly fee to be able to use a hosted software solution. . Marketplaces are also very common business models.

Sales Cycle 110

Sales Cycle Software .Net Business Model 110

Austin Startup

NOVEMBER 12, 2017

A frequent metaphor I use in customer acquisition, fundraising, or any kind of deal making is that you as the founder and promoter should present the finished meal on the dining table and not drag your counterparts into the kitchen. Most customers will sell themselves if you just give them half a chance.

Term Sheet 48

Term Sheet Technical Review Due Diligence Merger 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Very simply, your cost to acquire a customer needs to be lower than the value of that customer (lifetime value). Sales cycles matter though.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Very simply, your cost to acquire a customer needs to be lower than the value of that customer (lifetime value). Sales cycles matter though.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 16, 2018

So unless your feature can increase that outcome – and not just incrementally by 20% but a serious differential like 10x – it’s unlikely that a current happy Mailchimp customer will want to switch to your product. Think about it – if you’re using MailChimp and make let’s say $100 in sales for every send.

Sales Cycle 54

Sales Cycle Differentiation Early Stage Bootstrapping 54

Hippoland

AUGUST 16, 2018

So unless your feature can increase that outcome – and not just incrementally by 20% but a serious differential like 10x – it’s unlikely that a current happy Mailchimp customer will want to switch to your product. Think about it – if you’re using MailChimp and make let’s say $100 in sales for every send.

Sales Cycle 48

Sales Cycle Differentiation Early Stage Bootstrapping 48

Hearpreneur

MAY 8, 2022

3- By creating strong relationships with our customers. We break through the noise by creating strong relationships with our customers and delivering clinical trial technology that allows cures to get to market faster. connections and benefit from quicker sales cycles and more opportunities. Photo Credit: Sammy Shayne.

Entrepreneur 132

Entrepreneur Audience Social Media Channel 132

This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 10, 2011

Slow sales cycles. Business Insider wrote about our investment in the company yesterday. If you're not going to build (or design) a product, then you need to be amazing at selling that product (or acquiring customers if you're a SaaS tool). That alone is enough to make a lot of VCs throw up a little in their mouths.

Sales Cycle 121

Sales Cycle Government Revenue Sales 121

K9 Ventures

SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

Putting myself in the shoes of the customer, here’s how I would think: “So, you want me to pay you $20K cash up front, for a product that has never been tested before. The best of both worlds is when the customer is willing to pay the upfront cost of the hardware, and is willing to pay for a subscription service on top of it.

Widget 48

Widget Sales Cycle Revenue Business Model 48

ConversionXL

JUNE 14, 2021

Why should customers buy from you? In this guide, you’ll learn how to differentiate your business and attract your ideal customers by creating a unique selling proposition. How a unique selling proposition (USP) attracts better customers and builds your brand (and where marketers get it wrong).

Software Review 158

Software Review Audience Differentiation Framework 158

Duct Tape Marketing

APRIL 16, 2012

But, if we actually understood that the only thing that mattered was an abundant volume of profitable customers, we would surely start with the customer in mind, right? Customer focus vs. business focus. Get customer discovery and sales right and you can’t fail.

Sales Cycle 69

Sales Cycle Sales Customer Business Model 69

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. The most common mistake startups make is assuming they can operate the same way big companies do, and expect success with little to no feedback from potential customers. This is a customer development problem. So What is Customer Development?

Customer Development 60

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

ConversionXL

APRIL 7, 2021

The book dedicates quite a few pages to the ‘customer-centric stack’ and argues that because you’re now able to know when someone is in the market for a solution like yours [via IP lookup or 1st or 3rd party intent data], you don’t need to “spam” them. In those days we just called it sales.

IP 98

IP Marketing Technical Review Software Review 98

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

So let’s look at Bookings as an example: Bookings =No of deals closed * Average Deal Size For Reseller Channels, we might be looking at something different like this: Revenue = No of productive resellers * average productivity per reseller (Note: in many businesses there are several categories of deals.

Metrics 55

Metrics Design Entrepreneur Startup 55

The Startup Magazine

DECEMBER 17, 2020

How helpful are customer satisfaction surveys? After all, just as a dissatisfied customer is more likely to go out of their way to make a complaint, satisfied customers may be more likely to skip a survey or give up in the middle if it’s too long. That doesn’t mean customer satisfaction surveys can’t be useful, though.

Customer 112

Customer Sales Cycle Business Model Sales 112

Duct Tape Marketing

MARCH 23, 2017

How to Use Facebook Ads to Drive Sustainable Traffic & Boost Sales written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing. Regardless of your business model, incorporating Facebook ads into your marketing funnel can be a dependable way to drive customers to your site and, ultimately, boost sales.

Sales 50

Sales eCommerce Campaign Audience 50

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 19, 2016

WeVue co-founder Taylor Wallace told me he doesn’t have a lot of time for training in the competitive software development industry, so he hires the “naturally curious” to fit with the company’s product-oriented business model. So what’s the best way to create your dream team? Study your game plan.

Startup 100

Startup Burn Rate Cofounder Salary 100

infochachkie.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

There is an inherent conflict in a consultant’s business model and the needs of a startup. Tracking such revenue can be a challenge but is possible to approximate the revenue impact of PR activities via the use of unique URLs, customer surveys, etc. Yet, it does nothing to help you execute your business model.

Equity 40

Equity Silicon Valley Cofounder Technical Review 40

Hippoland

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

I’ll give you an example with my own startup LaunchBit and how our understanding of the problem and the customer became more refined over time: V1: Helping online marketers get customers profitably. V2: Helping online marketers who have previously bought ads in email lists get customers profitably. Or in between?

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Business Model B2B Email 48

Hippoland

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

I’ll give you an example with my own startup LaunchBit and how our understanding of the problem and the customer became more refined over time: V1: Helping online marketers get customers profitably. V2: Helping online marketers who have previously bought ads in email lists get customers profitably. Or in between?

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Business Model B2B Email 48

Tim Keane

APRIL 14, 2008

Can we quantify success in terms of calls, visits, customer sizes, and so forth? Can we produce a market map to track what our customers want, and from whom they are getting it? Can we, in short, develop knowledge that other competitors do not have to reduce our sales cycle and increase results? Books I Like.

Ireland 60

Ireland Wisconsin Forecast Sales Cycle 60

BeyondVC

AUGUST 26, 2008

I have written a number of times about frictionless sales and how on-demand companies have a huge opportunity to reduce their sales and marketing costs and subsequently scale their business more efficiently. Follow that with a 3 month implementation process to get the customer happy.

Cost 60

Cost Sales Sales Cycle Demand 60