Up and Running

OCTOBER 7, 2019

Think of them like this: If you have a critical sales milestone your company needs to meet by the end of the year, KPIs should deliver incremental evidence that you’re either headed in the right direction, or you’re not. . Sales KPIs. Sales conversion rate: shows how well your sales team is in converting prospects into new customers.

Founder 71

Founder Retention Metrics Technical Review 71

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Other advisors provided marketing with industry-specific advice in our initial vertical markets (computational fluid dynamics, computational chemistry, finite element analysis, and petroleum engineering). In short order they learned how to transition from being customers on the receiving end of a sales pitch to giving one.

Engineer 208

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 208

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. would look in each of the verticals. For example, How does sales differ from one market to another? Sales – What Channel to reach the customer?

Vertical 123

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 123

ConversionXL

MAY 27, 2022

Bootstrapped startup Omnisend carved out a $19 million niche in an already saturated vertical. Typically, they use gated content to capture the prospect’s contact information so the sales team can nurture and convert them. Qualified leads pass to the sales team to encourage through the sales process.

Lead Generation 107

Lead Generation Demand Audience eCommerce 107

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities. The board raises a collective eyebrow.

Customer Development 229

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 229

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 20, 2014

I have been saying privately for years now that I believe online video will evolve into fragmented distribution (my next online video post) and vertical production. This was a marked change from the previous leadership of YouTube. And we’re growing our sales organization.

South America 291

South America Colombia Mexico Vertical 291

YoungUpstarts

MAY 6, 2014

by Matt Tenny, author of “ Serve to Be Great: Leadership Lessons from a Prison, a Monastery, and a Boardroom “ A recent Gallup poll shows that only 30 percent of Americans are actively engaged at work. This is accomplished easily when you build a culture of servant leadership. Since then, it’s been almost vertical.

Leadership 169

Leadership Employee Community Non-Compete 169

Up and Running

AUGUST 6, 2019

Anything too experimental runs the risk of diminishing sales once the curiosity factor wears off, especially if it takes some time to get the food and your kitchen processes right. Understand that good leadership is always key. ” Organic marketing and sales options. Promotions.

Technical Review 86

Technical Review SBA Merger Customer 86

Occam's Razor

JULY 24, 2018

In all, the Impact Matrix contains 46 of the most commonly used business metrics – with an emphasis on sales and marketing. Action #2: Aligning Metrics & Leadership Altitude. Identify if the metrics being reported to each leadership layer are the ones being recommended by the Impact Matrix. What’s your quadrant?

Analytics 93

Analytics Framework Metrics Algorithm 93

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 140

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 140

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. Two paragraphs, Five bullets. It didn’t take more.

Silicon Valley 266

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 266

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

I had last been in Chapel Hill on a winter’s day in 1986, traveling with the VP of Sales of our new supercomputer startup, Ardent. My ex-boss was going to be the VP of Engineering and I would report to the CEO whose marketing acumen and sales instincts seemed at the time to be telepathic and sense of theater was legend.

North Carolina 127

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 127

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. So what’s wrong the product development model?

Customer Development 242

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

I vividly remember the sales guy saying, “It’s only some kid in field service. Some sales guy who was too busy to take the meeting was probably retired in Maui on the commissions. Your Customers are Not Who You Think For years I thought this “million unit chip sale by accident&# was a “one-off&# funny story.

Silicon Valley 135

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 135

YoungUpstarts

JULY 6, 2017

Maefield Development is a privately-owned, vertically-integrated real estate development firm headed up by Chairman and CEO Mark Siffin , who has been with the company since its formation in 1991.

Developer 100

Developer Indianapolis New York City Acquisition 100

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.

Silicon Valley 130

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 130

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money.

Silicon Valley 127

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 127

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 24, 2018

These include operational systems, production systems, sales and marketing systems, finance and legal systems, strategic alignment systems, idea decision systems, rapid research systems — and the list goes on. But ideas can’t be random. They need to be focused on one of the organization’s strategic priorities. .

Intellectual Property 174

Intellectual Property Engineer Flash Vertical 174

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

The mode purpose for funding is (in order of frequency) Sales, Marketing, Market Expansion, Product Development, and Hiring Employees. Additionally, Feenix typically needs fewer financial covenants and can provide quicker turnaround for due diligence with the benefit of transparency they receive by tracking credit card sales activity.

Revenue 60

Revenue Technical Review Software Review Equity 60

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

Our small training department had been without a manager for months and finding a replacement didn’t seem to be high on the VP of Sales list. We four instructors would grumble and complain to one another about our lack of leadership. Perhaps if you have a union job based on seniority, but not in any startup I’ve ever seen.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

We knew from back-of-the-envelope calculations that I would need 3 times the combined marketing and sales budgets of the incumbents for a head-on assault. (I The 3:1 Lanchester Laws said I would need $60M in marketing and sales spending to win. You need to hire the right type of sales people for the type of [.]

Silicon Valley 146

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 146

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

billion for a company with less than $50 million in sales. » Dig for Leadership - Stories that try to make the world a better place. , AKPC_IDS += "1128,"; (No Ratings Yet) Loading … Posted in Leadership | Tagged [.] On its first day of trading, Netscape stock closed at $58/share, valuing the company at $2.7

Silicon Valley 226

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 226

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 27, 2018

This is why practice leads write thought leadership, speak at conferences and more generally work to articulate the kind of “burning platforms” on which urgency and engagement are built. At least they should be open to the idea of improvement. Create distinctions which illuminate challenges or opportunities to which you are the answer.

Developer 149

Developer Elevator Pitch Reputation Vertical 149

Austin Startup

SEPTEMBER 19, 2017

Perhaps they have previous leadership experience at these companies or are still there today. This is useful for a number of reasons, the most obvious of which is to help you navigate the right channels in your vertical and open doors to potential customers. I think of this as an early test of the founding team’s sales ability.

Advisory Board 48

Advisory Board Sweat Equity Marketing Vertical 48

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

When a startup finds a repeatable sales process and steadily increasing revenue, its investors wants to harvest the rewards and build a culture of “execution.” However, if the founder is still running the company, the last thing he wants is a company complacent with day-to-day execution.

Customer 204

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 204

Lightspeed Venture Partners

DECEMBER 16, 2010

Today we’re announcing that Lightpseed and Accel are investing in Bonobos , a vertically-integrated men’s apparel etailer. For an e-commerce website, this means that fast, free shipping and returns are important factors to drive men’s apparel sales. I’m very excited about our investment in Bonobos.

Vertical 114

Vertical eCommerce Curation Acquisition 114

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

Market Type affects your spending and sales ramp after you reach product/market fit. You say, “Market Type affects your spending and sales ramp after you reach product/market fit.&# Use the Lean Startup - When There's Market Risk The second question is : “What’s the “ Market Type ” of your startup? Does this help?

Customer Development 224

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 224

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. In the next few posts that follow, I’ll describe how thinking of a solution to this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – that offers a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities.

Customer Development 222

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 222

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: [.] The Potrero benchmark strategy was one component of this creating end user demand through PR.)

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 125

A Crowded Space

AUGUST 20, 2015

The sales and marketing channels will be complete guesses - trying lots of different things to see what works. Founders should have a clearer idea about which customer verticals work the best and focus exclusively on those. The understanding of the customer is strong and you gain a leadership position within your niche.

Vertical 60

Vertical Channel Acquisition Metrics 60

The Startup Magazine

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

He has a wealth of experience in the data vertical, having served in previous roles at companies such as Intel, AllScripts, and Vision.bi. In his 17-year career, Rosenberg has developed key insights into the minds of CFOs and FP&A teams, with strengths in both customer-facing leadership and data analytics itself.

Hiring 172

Hiring Software Review Customer 172

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

The initial hypothesis for Epiphany (from my much smarter partner Ben ) was that as departments in the enterprise (manufacturing, finance, customer support sales) became automated, the marketing department would eventually get its turn.

Silicon Valley 237

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 237

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. Since we had gotten out of the software business when we came out of Chapter 11 , and our sales channel didn’t know what to do with software, we licensed ReelTime to Adobe. We knew something our CEO didn’t.

Video 171

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 171

Hippoland

APRIL 3, 2016

It’s a weird mix of customer service and marketing and sales.” ” It turns out that a few years later, marketers are looking to build tighter rapport with their customers, and this tighter rapport really is a weird mix of marketing / sales / customer service. And the company is doing really well!

Differentiation 48

Differentiation Marketing Vertical Software 48

Lightspeed Venture Partners

MAY 3, 2016

This vaulted EverString into a leadership position early on. For instance, a marketer may be simplistically marketing to segments defined by geography and vertical. That allowed EverString quickly to introduce predictive lead generation capability — not to just score leads, but to generate new leads.

Architecture 60

Architecture China B2B Sales Cycle 60

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

Market Type Integral to the Customer Development model is the notion that Market Type choices affect the way the company will deploy its sales, marketing and financial resources. Reply Customer Development Manifesto: The Path of Warriors and Winners (part 5) » Dig for Leadership - Stories that try to make the world a better place. ,

Customer Development 249

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 249

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

However, in catching up with the VP of Sales of Ardent last night, I was reminded one of the few times I did return for closure. In my career I’ve been involved with lots of sales deals, and for some reason losing this was the one deal I never forgot. It was for sale on Ebay. I liked to fail fast, move on, and not look back.

Silicon Valley 195

Silicon Valley San Diego RSS California 195