Steve Blank

MARCH 17, 2020

Here are a few thoughts about operating in uncertainty in a pandemic. Next, take a look at your actual revenue each month – not forecast, but real revenue coming in each month. Subtract your monthly gross burn rate from your monthly revenue to get your net burn rate. Or you change sales strategy. Laying off people?

Burn Rate 436

Burn Rate Startup Valuation Sales Cycle 436

Women Entrepreneurs Can

OCTOBER 6, 2023

CPQ streamlines the sales process, reduces errors, and impresses customers with a professional-looking quote. If your organization needs more efficient revenue processes, including slow quoting, siloed product data, and difficult configuration management, then a CPQ solution can help.

Software 52

Software Sales Sales Cycle Revenue 52

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 20, 2023

Nice to have does not motivate a revenue stream. Technologies that cure world hunger may find that that hungry people don’t have money, and government agencies as customers are a very long sales cycle. More features usually means more complexity in operation and support. Limit the features and complexity.

Customer 276

Customer Sales Cycle Social Media Viral 276

Hunter Walker

JUNE 7, 2014

Not because they’re all operating in stealth or pre-product – in fact some already are earning $1m+ in revenue per annum. Party rounds blew up on a number of startups who found it difficult to get ongoing operational support from investors who didn’t have time or inclination to lean in.

Technical Review 117

Technical Review CTO Hire Finance Stealth 117

Women Entrepreneurs Can

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

Whether you’re offering B2C or B2B SaaS, you need to make sure you’re employing the right sales strategies to drive revenue and get your offering into the hands of people and organizations who need it. . Avoid this and keep reading to find out 4 important sales strategies for SaaS. Offer Discounted Annual Plans.

Churn Rate 52

Churn Rate Sales B2C Sales Cycle 52

ReadWriteStart

FEBRUARY 1, 2012

Most have felt the program worthwhile and given them a jumpstart on their operations. Our plan is to have seven figure revenues and be profitable by Q3, in addition to to seven new hires by end of the year," he says. Since joining the program, he has seen an increase in ad sales and also received new investment capital.

St. Louis 118

St. Louis CTO Hire Fractional CTO Entrepreneur 118

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. . This metric helps determine how much cash you need for operation and expansion. Marketing KPIs.

Founder 71

Founder Retention Metrics Technical Review 71

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 29, 2011

We did learn from the experience — we did a post-mortem and decided what evidence should have stopped us from accepting the account, and now we build that into our sales cycle. If you liked that, you'll probably like these too: Tech Support *is* sales. For the same reason that I keep recommending Bill. Tweet. -->.

Technical Review 236

Technical Review Software Review Reputation Sales Cycle 236

The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 7, 2013

There’s friction in companies, and so the sales cycles are long. You are the sales. Show respect to sales and go-to market strategy, as they’re absolutely critical to nail. The first couple of sales are difficult, because no one knows you yet and your product hasn’t been sold before. Same goes for team members.

Technical Cofounder 145

Technical Cofounder Sales Cycle Cofounder Sales 145

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 16, 2011

In the case of Freshdesk, their main competitor, Zendesk, is operating with a San Francisco - Copenhagen cost-structure and will find it harder to compete with this strategy. In fact, they generated $100k in revenues over the last year, since they first pitched at one of our roundtables.

India 123

India Bootstrapping Non-Compete Entrepreneur 123

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 19, 2020

Nice to have does not motivate a revenue stream. Technologies that cure world hunger may find that that hungry people don’t have money, and government agencies as customers are a very long sales cycle. More features usually means more complexity in operation and support. Limit the features and complexity.

Technology 317

Technology Marketing Sales Cycle Social Media 317

ConversionXL

APRIL 28, 2020

To have the future we wanted, we needed to shift away from monetizing our open-data community and toward enterprise sales. To do that, we built a demand funnel that took us from nothing to 44X revenue growth in a single year. Since we had a sales development team of our own, we needed to factor in their efforts, too.

Demand 101

Demand Revenue SQL B2B 101

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 28, 2016

By Kurt Bilafer, Global Vice President Sales & Success at WePay. As a sales leader, my professional life is filled with quotas, metrics and dashboards. Early in my career, I was always optimizing for percentage of quota attained, which is a typical sales metric and usually tied to your compensation. Optimizing to quota.

Sales 100

Sales Social Media Sales Cycle Japan 100

The Startup Magazine

NOVEMBER 3, 2021

In this article, we try and help those who want to promote and boost their SaaS operations by sharing some clever ways to go about it. Since SaaS products have a short sales cycle where potential leads may not interact with your sales team, email marketing plays an important role in encouraging leads through the sales funnel.

Advertising 159

Advertising Social Media Campaign SEO 159

Where to Play

FEBRUARY 5, 2019

It can fly or roll on any surface, and will actually be able to operate in a wide range of temperatures and pressures. Plants that convert heat energy into electric power, include huge boilers and super-heaters operating under extreme temperatures. The overall challenge was therefore estimated as ‘low-mid’.

Agile 54

Agile Technical Review Sales Cycle Distribution 54

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

First up was Brad Barrett presenting GrillGrate , a grill accessory with which Brad has built a year-to-date revenue of $400,000. Today she is operating at a 30,000 feet level, and I am concerned that unless she gets down to earth and develops more granular and specific strategies, she will not get anywhere. GrillGrate.

India 114

India Silicon Valley Incubator Bootstrapping 114

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? All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal. More on that in a moment.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

Some of the best plans I have seen define the size of the market by amalgamating the revenues (reported or estimated) of their competitors. If you have some intel on sales cycles, it is important to share that within this section and be sure your financial section incorporates that as well. Is it simply price and volume?

Business Plan 124

Business Plan Elevator Pitch Equity Private Equity 124

NZ Entrepreneur

SEPTEMBER 16, 2020

The statistics show that even though most founders bet their time and resources that their startups will be the best in the world, 90% of those new startups won’t be in operation in 10-15 years. For example, “How will unit cost affect our capital requirements and how will product pricing affect revenue?” Timing of sales.

Startup 69

Startup Sales Cycle Down Round Revenue 69

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 20, 2014

Nice to have does not motivate a revenue stream. Creators of technologies that cure world hunger may find that hungry people don’t have money, but government agencies as customers are a very long sales cycle. More features usually means more complexity in operation and support. Limit the features and complexity.

Technology 286

Technology Startup Sales Cycle Social Media 286

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 7, 2022

Understanding CAC by each channel helps you identify areas of opportunity and streamline operations for better ROI. This is due to factors such as maturity, sales cycle, product value, purchase frequency, and customer lifespan. Total marketing spend in Q1 + total sales spend in Q1 / Number of new customers in Q1 = CAC in Q1.

Acquisition 22

Acquisition eCommerce Cost Customer 22

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

Diving in a bit more into some thoughts here: 1b) Ad-based revenue streams generally have terrible unit economics. A typical ad-based revenue stream on a media website is around $5 per 1000 eyeballs ($5m CPM and give or take $1-$20ish CPMs). For example, if you are running affiliate ads for hotels, you might get 3-5% on a sale.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

Diving in a bit more into some thoughts here: 1b) Ad-based revenue streams generally have terrible unit economics. A typical ad-based revenue stream on a media website is around $5 per 1000 eyeballs ($5m CPM and give or take $1-$20ish CPMs). For example, if you are running affiliate ads for hotels, you might get 3-5% on a sale.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

Bootstrap was term coined from the computer lingo ‘booting’ which means starting a computer or starting a chain of processes which eventually starts up the operating system. Another pro-tip – Keep everything short – small up-front capital requirement, short sales cycles, short payment terms and recurring revenue cycles.

Bootstrapping 100

Bootstrapping Cofounder Startup Sales Cycle 100

Mucker Lab

FEBRUARY 1, 2014

But for entrepreneurs in enterprise markets, (saas, ad tech, b2b marketplace etc) we all too often believe self-service transaction and sales (usually in forms of some sort of purchase flow) is a development must-have rather than a feature to trade off. The sales person aims to charge between 10% to 50% of the value generated.

Sales Cycle 102

Sales Cycle B2B Sales Web 102

ConversionXL

MAY 27, 2022

Very few, if any, of these interactions are with a sales rep. Because if people are making up their own minds, without coercion from sales, creating demand is the best way to get them to choose you. Because if people are making up their own minds, without coercion from sales, creating demand is the best way to get them to choose you.

Demand 95

Demand Management B2B Campaign 95

Small Business Force

NOVEMBER 5, 2017

In the same way, sales success comes from doing the right things that make customers want to do business with you, initially, and want to continue to do business with you over time. However the information is gathered it should be shared with sales people either directly or through your CRM, if you have one.

Sales 32

Sales Sales Cycle Forecast Social Media 32

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 19, 2016

Nice to have does not motivate a revenue stream. Technologies that cure world hunger may find that that hungry people don’t have money, and government agencies as customers are a very long sales cycle. More features usually means more complexity in operation and support. Limit the features and complexity.

Sales Cycle 120

Sales Cycle Social Media Viral Technology 120

ConversionXL

MAY 27, 2022

Sales intelligence platform Cognism cut their lead generation efforts by 90% in 2021. Then they increased their revenue from $2M to $6M in six months. In this article, you’ll learn how to build a demand generation funnel that fuels the pipeline, shortens the sale cycle, and generates revenue.

Demand 124

Demand B2B Distribution Channel 124

Mucker Lab

FEBRUARY 3, 2014

But for entrepreneurs in enterprise markets, (saas, ad tech, b2b marketplace etc) we all too often believe self-service transaction and sales (usually in forms of some sort of purchase flow) is a development must-have rather than a feature to trade off. The sales person aims to charge between 10% to 50% of the value generated.

Sales Cycle 87

Sales Cycle B2B Sales Web 87

ConversionXL

JUNE 2, 2022

Some see it as a sales tactic, while others view it as a content marketing strategy. In this article, you’ll learn how to define your ABM strategy so you can target the right accounts and increase your revenue. Think of it as a filter that helps you find the highest chance of return on investment, revenue potential, and profitability.

Customer 98

Customer Marketing Channel Acquisition 98

Up and Running

DECEMBER 21, 2016

Net income to sales. A company with its cash tied up in accounts receivable and inventory (a low ratio of cash-assets) might not have enough cash to keep the lights on, much less to ramp up production if sales accelerate. EBITDA to assets. Debt service coverage ratio. Liabilities to assets. How to improve your EBITDA-assets ratio.

Metrics 60

Metrics .Net Cash Position Finance 60

www.forentrepreneurs.com

FEBRUARY 2, 2010

The company has just missed its quarterly revenue forecast. Lets take an example, and look at how they might do this: They will be able to tell you that revenue is composed of deals. To compute revenue, you multiply average deal size by number of deals. SolidWorks 2: The best VAR management program in the world?

Metrics 55

Metrics Design Entrepreneur Startup 55

Duct Tape Marketing

NOVEMBER 17, 2022

I was in sales and marketing, and Andrea was in operations and dementia care. And we just kind of rose through the ranks with some of the largest senior living operators, publicly traded companies in regional divisional, and then national VP positions. But we double in size every year in terms of revenue.

Differentiation 73

Differentiation Sales Cycle Audio Networking 73

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. As I mention in an earlier post, " The less friction you have in your sales and delivery model, the easier it is to scale.

Cost 60

Cost Sales Sales Cycle Demand 60

ReadWriteStart

MAY 4, 2011

First up, Manoj Dharap presented EzeeBank , a core banking solution for credit co-operative societies. Manoj is experiencing a long sales cycle of close to 12 months, but he has already created a sustainable company that has revenues and profits. Indian In A Box.

India 116

India Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Massachusetts 116

ConversionXL

MAY 8, 2014

Better Value Propositions Mean Better Revenues: We’ve Got Proof. million in incremental revenue. We needed to think of value proposition as the center of everything we do,” – Peter Doucette, Executive Director of Circulation, Sales & Marketing for The Boston Globe. million in incremental revenue.

Clickthrough 100

Clickthrough Cost Tucson Customer 100