article thumbnail

Always Right: Five Risks You Must Take With Your Customers

YoungUpstarts

by Tom Panaggio, author of “ The Risk Advantage: Embracing the Entrepreneur’s Unexpected Edge “ Here’s one of business’s dirty little secrets: Many business owners prefer to keep their customers at arm’s length. Nobody likes feeling unimportant, and with all of the choices out there today, customers don’t have to settle for it.

Customer 147
article thumbnail

10 Tips To Ensure That Your New Venture Is Investable

Startup Professionals Musings

Simply stated, it means that your business has the potential to multiply revenue with minimal incremental cost. Ready to scale is when you have a proven product and a proven business model, about to expand to new geographies and markets. Focus on marketing and indirect channels to get the message out quickly.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Paranoid Companies Miss the Best New Opportunities

Startup Professionals Musings

Your goal is “ coopetition ” - to find a way to partner with your competitor in such a way that both parties can substantially benefit from the other's resources - without stealing customers or damaging anyone's credibility. In the following quarter, we jointly signed up two new customers who loved our “end to end” integrated solution.

article thumbnail

Customer loyalty comes in four special forms.

Berkonomics

Repeat customers, raving fans, angry backlashers, commodity shoppers. First, negative kinds of loyalty: Here’s another way to look at the ladder to an ideal customer loyalty relationship. Customers hate this, especially when they have a complaint. Worse yet, customers attained through these sources are rarely loyal at all.

article thumbnail

Too Many Small Businesses Still Ignore Social Media

Startup Professionals Musings

According to a recent Harvard Business Review article , only 60% of companies today use social media for marketing, and only 12% of those feel that they are using it effectively. They don’t know if they should move to social networks for lead generation, branding, customer loyalty, or for direct marketing and e-commerce.

article thumbnail

7 Keys To Strategic Partnerships That Profit Everyone

Startup Professionals Musings

Beyond that, there may be a large percentage of common technology where they both need to minimize cost to gain share from the big dinosaurs who already have this advantage. Expand the market for both. Typically, there are market opportunities that neither of your core competencies can win alone.

article thumbnail

Your Toughest Competitor May be Your Best Partner

Startup Professionals Musings

Your goal is “ coopetition ” - to find a way to partner with your competitor in such a way that both parties can substantially benefit from the other's resources - without stealing customers or damaging anyone's credibility. In the following quarter, we jointly signed up two new customers who loved our “end to end” integrated solution.

Partner 225