Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 11, 2010

The Customer Development process is the way startups quickly iterate and test each element of their business model , reducing customer and market risk. The first step of Customer Development is called Customer Discovery. outside the building and test them in front of customers. VP of Sales – “Sure.”

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The Startup Magazine

MARCH 10, 2024

Salesforce, renowned for its robust customer relationship management (CRM) platform, serves as the nerve center for many businesses’ sales, marketing, and customer service operations. Why does Salesforce SMS integration matter? How does Lead Manager Ninja work on enhancing the consumer experience?

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. They never understood Market Type. Why does Market Type matter?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Steve Blank

JULY 24, 2012

The VC’s suggested I should spend a day at Onyx Software, an early pioneer in Sales Automation in Seattle. Their VP of Sales was about 6’ 3” and seemed to be almost as wide. But in that one day I had learned a lot about sales automation that would shape my thinking when we founded Epiphany. I Know A Great Customer.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

Five Easy Pieces – The Marketing Mission After a few months of talking to customers , talking to our channel and working with sales we defined the marketing Mission (our job) was to: Help Sales deliver $25 million in sales with a 45% gross margin. The same was true for the Product Marketing group.

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YoungUpstarts

APRIL 19, 2017

In e-commerce, retaining customers is essential to the survival of your business. It has long been known that keeping a customer is much cheaper than acquiring a new one, as those customers tend to be far more receptive to sales and promotions after they have made an initial purchase with you.

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Steve Blank

JULY 22, 2010

Startup CEO’s can’t delegate sales and expect it to happen. Customer Validation needs to have the CEO actively involved. Here’s an example in a direct sales channel. Customer Development Diagnostics over Lunch. It certainly sounded like he had done a great job of Customer Discovery. Sales Process.

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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.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

How can we attract buyers to our channel before they make purchasing decisions? Sales process: buyer/ user/ influencer etc.? The Agora team decided to formalize the customer discovery process by coming up with a set of Customer Discovery principles and questions that were as good as any I’ve seen. Demand generation?

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Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

The Roominate dollhouse building kits are being sold via their own website and soon, retail channels. But we were meeting to talk about sales and marketing. They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire. Hiring Channel Sales. “So They learned a ton.

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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. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. You can pre-order it starting today.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2014

Skunk works differed from advanced research groups in that they were more than just product development groups. They had direct interaction with customers and controlled a sales channel which allowed them to negotiate their own deals with customers. Skunk works looked much like a startup.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

I’ll publish the final post in this series this week and then move on to my next series – sales & marketing. I’ll be covering my PUCCKA sales methodology. The exact same team had worked on 2 previous customer service startups (and 1 non-CS product). It will be controversial – I know.

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San Diego Entrepreneur Philadelphia Cloud 267

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

For example, one of the critical business model hypotheses they could test locally is Product/Market fit – the connection between their Value Proposition (what product or service they were building) and the Customer Segment (who they were building it for.). Test channel and demand creation activities in the U.S. sales office.

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The Startup Magazine

MARCH 29, 2024

Then, consider how you’ll reach your customers and what kind of relationship you want to build with them. Will you opt for direct sales, subscriptions, or a freemium model? It’s not just about a logo or a tagline; it’s the experience you promise your customers.

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Intellectual Property Angel Investor Business Model Bootstrapping 132

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. See part one for the first time it happened. This time it was serious. Good stuff too.

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Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

We were charging a really high up-front annual fee to these providers and the end result of that was a pretty long sales cycle. We tested the new strategy with several customers in the pipeline and it took our sales cycle from about 60 days to 1 week. Tune in Thursday at 1 pm PT, 4 pm ET on Sirius XM Channel 111.

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Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

The Roominate dollhouse building kits are being sold via their own website and soon, retail channels. But we were meeting to talk about sales and marketing. They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire. Hiring Channel Sales. “So They learned a ton.

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PR China Lean Channel 206

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

———— T o: Marketing Department From: Steve Subject: Going to Trade Shows Like it Matters Generating Leads Ownership If your company is going to a show to generate leads, then sales owns the show. This is worthy of an open and honest discussion with sales up front. And inviting to the booth/dinner/private demo.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 128

Steve Blank

JUNE 6, 2016

Prior to his investing and advisory career, Evangelos spent 20+ years in high-technology industries, in executive roles spanning operations, marketing, sales and engineering. Tune in Thursday at 1 pm PT, 4 pm ET on Sirius XM Channel 111. Filed under: Customer Development. He was the CEO of two startups.

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ConversionXL

JANUARY 24, 2014

It’s Not A Conversion Problem, It’s A Customer Development Problem. Think About Customer Experience, Not Just Conversion Optimization. Channel Partners. With business development, it’s your job not just to help the business grow, but grow sustainably. Content & Co-marketing. Affiliates.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

A business plan has a set of assumptions (who’s the customer, what’s the price, what’s the channel, what are the product features that matter, etc.) Yet by first customer ship most of the business model hasn’t been validated or tested. The half-life of the first VP of sales of a startup is ~18 months.).

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Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 247

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

We were charging a really high up-front annual fee to these providers and the end result of that was a pretty long sales cycle. We tested the new strategy with several customers in the pipeline and it took our sales cycle from about 60 days to 1 week. Tune in Thursday at 1 pm PT, 4 pm ET on Sirius XM Channel 111.

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Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2010

Wait a minute, what about the rest of Customer Development ? Aren’t you going to validate your hypotheses by first getting some customers?”. Now I was confused, and I asked, “Well what do you guys believe – Customer Development or launch on a schedule?” I was unprepared for what they said next. To Do list.

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Customer Development Singapore Channel PR 307

Steve Blank

MARCH 5, 2012

One of the confusing things to entrepreneurs, investors and educators is the relationship between customer development and business model design and business planning and execution. When does a new venture focus on customer development and business models ? And when do business planning and execution come into play?

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Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 320

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

Through advertising or direct sales, these sites harvest intent. Instead of making a few dollars per sale and hoping for thousands of sales, you sell to only a few customers, and charge much higher rates. They’re deep into Customer Development ,” he said. Tech support is sales. Here’s why.

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Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

Funding challenges and other issues founders face in the early days of starting up were the focus of interviews with the latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on SiriusXM Channel 111 (airing weekly Thursdays at 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern). Tune in Thursday at 1 pm PT, 4 pm ET on Sirius XM Channel 111.

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Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you know I believe that: 1) a product is just a part of a startup, but understanding customers, channel, pricing, etc. are what make it a business, 2) business plans are fine for large companies where there is an existing market, existing product and existing customers.

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Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

This makes sense in a company where your customers, channel and competition are known. Large companies had VP’s of Sales and Marketing, so VC’s made startups organize that way as well. Business Plan vs. Business Model + Customer Development. But you can’t fake a business model/customer development presentation.

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Business Model Customer Development Utah Business Plan 263

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 17, 2010

If this is your attitude, your conception of tech support is completely backwards and you're missing out on important channels for marketing, product development, and sales. Tech support is sales. At Smart Bear we made millions of dollars in both individual and enterprise sales without "sales.".

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Technical Review Sales Turkey Software Review 245

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

These new entrants disrupted their food categories by offering high quality proprietary recipes, outsourcing their manufacturing, and using their cash and resources on sales and marketing to build distribution and a differentiated brand. And not just any customer; it was from one of the largest supermarket chains in the U.S.

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North America Lean Customer Development Distribution 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

press and use it to generate end user demand and then drive that demand into our sales channel. Reply SuperMac War Story 9: Sales, Not Awards « Steve Blank , on April 30, 2009 at 5:02 am Said: [.] Getting B-52s through the Soviet Air Defense System Startup Ethics: Albatross or Essential?

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Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 2, 2011

There's a lot out there around Customer Development - read Steve Blank : Entrepreneurship as a Science – The Business Model/Customer Development Stack - Steve Blank , October 25, 2010 Checklists for Chaos, The Path to Success - Steve Blank , October 28, 2010 and reading about Lean, MVPs, etc. is a requirement.

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Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

We had seen the reactions of people playing with the prototypes in our lab and when we demo’d it to our sales force. All we had to do was tell customers they could get video into their computer – and not promise anything else. Our answer was, “People will love this thing, as long as we don’t oversell the product.”

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

For a startup, having great sales DNA is a wonderful asset. The problem stems from selling each customer a custom one-time product. This is the magic of sales: by learning about each customer in-depth, they can convince each of them that this product would solve serious problems. They are closing orders.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

These groups are adapting or adopting the practices of startups and accelerators – disruption and innovation rather than direct competition, customer development versus more product features, agility and speed versus lowest cost. existing enterprises are establishing corporate innovation groups. What Does this Mean?

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