by Brant | Sep 13, 2010 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Lean Startup, Process-Oriented Marketing, Sales and Marketing Roadmap, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development
Welcome to the maze of complex B2B sales. Did you think B2B sales was going to be straightforward; based solely on rational, business-savvy calculations? Based on the bottom-line? Most everyone recognizes that the B2C sales process requires appealing to consumer’s emotions. But believe it or not, business buyers, influencers and users are human, too, and thus are not-exempt from emotional decision making. Ego, hierarchy, competitiveness, fear, grandstanding, sycophantry join budget, market share, revenue, profits, risk, time, resources in the sale.
The “Status Quo Coefficient” represents that which you must overcome above and beyond the pain your product solves, in order to make a sale.
by Brant | Sep 2, 2010 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Lean Startup, Marketing Help, Sales and Marketing Roadmap
Generally speaking:
Pre-Problem-Solution Fit, you concentrate on learning as much as you can about the problem, who are the real customers (user? buyer? boss?), and possible solutions.
Pre-Minimum Viable Product, you concentrate of learning, developing and testing the minimum features and functionality required o solve the problem to a degree the customer will buy.
Pre-Product-Market Fit, you concentrate on learning about funnels, testing messaging and positioning, and likely iterating on product and market segment in search of P-M fit.
by Brant | May 26, 2010 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Lean Startup, Sales and Marketing Roadmap, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development
The consultants came out in droves to weigh in on Steve Blank’s recent post, “Consultants Don’t Pivot, Founders Do.” (Myself included.) Generally, all were in agreement with Blank’s primary point: Founders get out of the building (physically...
by CustDevGuy | May 14, 2010 | Brant's Rant, Pricing, Sales and Marketing Roadmap
Very recently, the Diaspora project (advertised as “the privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network”) on Kickstarter has caught the attention of the Twitterati, and has blown past its goal of raising $10,000 by...
by Brant | Apr 22, 2010 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Lean Startup, Sales and Marketing Roadmap
Update: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development now available as an ebook. Print version coming soon. I am excited about participating in Eric Ries’ Lean Startup conference tomorrow! (Friday 4/23/2010). Check out program schedule here and...
by Brant | Feb 16, 2010 | Brant's Rant, Lean Startup, Sales and Marketing Roadmap
Minimally viable, a product evolved: Early it was pliable, Target market try-able; few features, but reliable In what makes it buy-able: problem is resolved.
by Brant | Feb 10, 2010 | Sales and Marketing Roadmap
I hear two schools of thoughts regarding the use of automated surveys: some prefer open text fields, others prefer buttons. Assume you were asked to take a customer survey for a product you use or are considering using. The survey is short (fewer than 10 questions)...
by Brant | Feb 9, 2010 | Brant's Rant, Lean Startup, Sales and Marketing Roadmap
Lean is not about the funding you take, The size of your sales force, the money you make. Lean is not how much money you spend, That you like your product and so does your friend. To test your guess and iterate, To kill your favorite feature your customers hate, To...
by Brant | Feb 3, 2010 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Lean Startup, Sales and Marketing Roadmap
Because of the overwhelming response and great feedback for the the Customer Development image I recently shared, I decided to share another from our upcoming book. Please let me know what you think. *CPS = Customer-Problem-Solution As shown in Figure 2, customer...
by Brant | Jan 29, 2010 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Sales and Marketing Roadmap
A new way of looking at sales and marketing Have you ever viewed a world map where South is up? It’s a useful frame of reference, since our Eurocentric view of North as “up” and South as “down” is really just an arbitrary one (a sphere has no top or bottom – nor left...
