Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 13, 2020

Having the best solution is a good start these days, but a solution alone is no longer enough to keep customer attention and loyalty. The challenge is to transform and hardwire your entire team to think in these terms, rather than the default focus on distinct towers of product quality, closing the sale, or fixing a complaint.

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Custom Customer Services Startup 168

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 14, 2021

With the advent of the Internet, social media, and instant communication via texting, customer expectations for service, as part of their entire customer experience, have changed. They expect you to be there, to know their history as a customer, and to treat them with priority and respect.

Custom 171

Custom Customer Social Media Design 171

Berkonomics

APRIL 11, 2019

An entrepreneur pitches using a deck with no slide for competition. We have no competition.”. Your potential customers could choose “do nothing.”. So, do your homework especially well by putting yourself into the minds of your potential customers. We investors see this all the time. Do your homework!

Competition 120

Competition Slides Sales Research 120

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 30, 2022

Today’s customers are much more in control of their buying decision, as they have more choices and more information than ever before. Bloom’s classic book, “ The New Experts: Win Today's Newly Empowered Customers.” This is a key moment where your customer acquisition costs go way down, and your profits go way up.

Customer 146

Customer Custom Startup Course 146

Berkonomics

JANUARY 12, 2023

Management undertakes a simple exercise of calculating the increased profitability of shutting down all R&D, sales and subordinate operations, and universally notes with shock the high net profit that results – from shutting down all operations except customer service to recurring customers (as in software support operations.).

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Sales Custom Customer SaaS 296

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 20, 2023

Instead, they need to validate a customer problem and real market need first. Don’t create solutions looking for a problem , since investors ignore these, and customers other than early adopters will be hard to find. I say again, customers buy solutions, not technology. Look for customer willingness and ability to pay.

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Customer Custom Social Media Technology 110

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 23, 2021

Yet, as a business consultant, I often find minimal focus on improving employee engagement and assessing their customer-facing performance. For example, I commonly see metrics to keep track of revenue per employee, overtime, and absenteeism, but I don’t often see measures of overall customer satisfaction with individual employees.

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Customer Custom Technical Review Metrics 147

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 11, 2020

They forget that adapting their company and themselves as their customers evolve is the key to long-term survival. Think of Blockbuster and Toys ‘R’ Us , both of whom missed customer changes and the move to online. Create an overt strategy to react to emerging customer trends. Expand into key new sales and delivery channels.

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Customer Custom Examples IBM 143

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 2, 2010

This is part of a series on sales & marketing. I previously covered how early phase sales teams should be “evangelical&# and consultative in nature. The first post on scaling sales dealt with “aiming&# your sales teams – making sure they were focused on the right opportunities.

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Sales Startup Training Pricing 289

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 22, 2021

As I talk to many of you in my role as business advisor, I still often hear the concern for maximum return to the business and stakeholders, more than a passion for sustainably enriching the lives of your customers and team. This applies to your own team, as well as customers. Make every customer experience memorable.

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Custom Customer Metrics Satisfaction 114

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 13, 2014

Of course, one sale isn’t really enough, so you need to get the first customer to recommend you to a second, and make sure the rate of sales ramps up quickly enough to keep the business alive and growing. Customers don’t buy the impossible dream. If you lose money on every sale, it’s hard to make it up in volume.

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Sales Customer Custom Entrepreneur 99

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 5, 2011

Specifically what is often not in the DNA of founders are sales skills. The result is a lack of knowledge of the process and of sales people themselves. I had never had any sales training so everything we did for the first couple of years was instinctual. I boil it down to this: sales people are sales people.

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Sales Startup Pricing Custom 316

Berkonomics

JUNE 27, 2019

And that behavior results in leaving little time for outreach to the most critical component in your chain – your key customers. Then, what is a benchmark for customer outreach? But, do your customer know that they want? Do customers know what they want from their suppliers for future products? That’s bad behavior!

Customer 120

Customer Custom Course Email 120

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 3, 2020

Today’s customers are much more in control of their buying decision, as they have more choices and more information than ever before. Bloom’s classic book, “ The New Experts: Win Today's Newly Empowered Customers.” This is a key moment where your customer acquisition costs go way down, and your profits go way up.

Custom 124

Custom Customer Startup Course 124

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 16, 2019

Most businesses spend big money testing their brand logo, catchy marketing phrases, and demographics, but spend little time training and validating that their employees can and do deliver exceptional experiences to their customers. They have to out-behave and outperform your competition. Gregg Lederman, in his classic book, “ ENGAGED!:

Customer 84

Customer Custom Training Satisfaction 84

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 31, 2010

This is part of my ongoing Sales & Marketing Series. In the first part of this post I talked about how sales in a startup is often evangelical , requires as consultative sale and needs constant adjustments based on customer feedback. We had 4 or 5 sales reps that had been around since the early days.

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Sales Newsletter Technical Review Activity 286

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 20, 2020

Contrary to popular opinion, viral marketing has not eliminated the need for old-fashioned lead generation to bring customers to a startup. Display ads on mobile devices, including video and audio, also offer a new opportunity to reach target customers. Display advertising. Email marketing.

Customer 146

Customer Custom Marketing Startup 146

Berkonomics

APRIL 19, 2012

Professional investors laugh when they hear an entrepreneur state, “We have no competition.” It could be that a larger competitor has met with its customers, promising to extend its product line into this very niche. So, do your homework especially well by putting yourself into the minds of your potential customers.

Competition 189

Competition Slides Sales Ideas 189

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 23, 2012

Of course, one sale isn’t really enough, so you need to get the first customer to recommend you to a second, and make sure rate of sales ramps up quickly enough to keep the business alive and growing. Customers don’t buy the impossible dream. If you lose money on every sale, it’s hard to make it up in volume.

Sales 96

Sales Custom Customer Pricing 96

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 21, 2023

It starts with a vision, but benefits quickly from a structured process of idea generation, evaluation, prototyping, customer feedback, and success metrics. Innovative technologies have no value until they are turned into solutions to real customer problems. From time to time, include customers and sales members in ideation sessions.

Coach 137

Coach Metrics Competition Ideas 137

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 19, 2019

Image via Flickr by jardenberg Your marketing launch is the most important element of startup success these days, to get customer attention in this world of information overload. To get to the core of what’s relevant to customers, you need to know them well. The eye is just as important as the mind when it comes to customers.

Customer 93

Customer Custom Marketing Tips 93

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 4, 2011

Of course, one sale isn’t really enough, so you need to get the first customer to recommend you to a second, and make sure rate of sales ramps up quickly enough to keep the business alive and growing. Customers don’t buy the impossible dream. If you lose money on every sale, it’s hard to make it up in volume.

Sales 97

Sales Customer Custom Pricing 97

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 29, 2023

I recognized this as I was reading the classic book, ” The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need ,” by Anthony Iannarino, who is an international sales leader and expert on optimizing results. His focus is on sales, but I see the same skills needed for entrepreneurs. Diagnosing and understanding the customer problem.

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Startup Sales Entrepreneur Customer 154

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 20, 2022

Your marketing launch is the most important element of startup success these days, to get customer attention in this world of information overload. To get to the core of what’s relevant to customers, you need to know them well. Helping customers discover new ways to solve common problems can quickly build you a loyal following.

Content 146

Content Newsletter Competition Writing 146

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 2, 2022

You can’t succeed in business without an operational model that delivers value to customers at a reasonable price, with an underlying cost that allows you to make a profit. A target market is the group of customers that the startup plans to attract through marketing and sales their product or service. Sales/Marketing.

Sales 102

Sales Customer Custom Outsource 102

Berkonomics

JULY 26, 2018

These are so succinct, so well defined, so precise that everyone in sales and everyone involved in marketing must be able to answer these three questions without pause, and convincingly. It would pay you to work over this set of questions in a special session with sales, marketing and senior management in the room at once.

Sales 226

Sales Custom Customer Pricing 226

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 9, 2023

Satisfy the seller’s need to claim a higher sales price victory by moving a substantial part of the price into a future earn–out or using the target company’s own cash to pay part of the price, or asking the seller to finance a significant piece of the sale. Offering too little in an acquisition to satisfy the seller? What power!

Pricing 156

Pricing Sales Examples Tool 156

Berkonomics

JUNE 2, 2022

Looking for an entrance into a VC, an angel group, a bank, a CxO for a sales opportunity, or any other entity? Few of your contacts will be willing to use their valuable social or political capital helping you with a sales effort, and you will definitely strain your relationship with the intermediary if not a close friend.

Ideas 156

Ideas Sales Competition Venture Capital 156

Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 24, 2022

Well, even though that acquisition is still playing itself out on the field of battle, it appears quite clear that the new parent has directed its new subsidiary to abandon the lower end of the market and focus upon the larger sales, corporate customers, and major brands. Been skewered for slow customer service?

Resource 156

Resource Competition Examples Custom 156

Tech.Co

SEPTEMBER 25, 2015

From apps to hardware, to KickStarter successes and international startups, we’re inching closer to finding out who will take home the title of Startup of the Year competition at our annual Celebrate Conference in October. Among the dozens of participants that applied for the online competitions, only a few progressed into the semifinals.

Competition 123

Competition Mobile Technical Review Startup 123

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 10, 2023

Entrepreneurs need to document a process of responding to a market need, sizing opportunity, assigning a specific business model, and planning for marketing, sales, and customer satisfaction. Productivity and repeatability is the hallmark of a good business, whereas a hobby usually assumes everything is custom built and personal.

Outsource Development 115

Outsource Development Startup Ideas Competition 115

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 29, 2014

Most businesses spend big money testing their brand logo, catchy marketing phrases, and demographics, but spend little time training and validating that their employees can and do deliver memorable experiences to their customers. They have to out-behave and outperform your competition. Keep your team happy to create engaged customers.

Custom 106

Custom Customer Training Satisfaction 106

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 21, 2013

Startups are usually so focused on selling more of their branded product or service to their own customer base (organic growth) that they don’t consider the more indirect methods (non-organic growth) of increasing revenue and market share. Fresh customer base. Economies of scale also apply to marketing, distribution, and sales.

Organization 97

Organization Competition Startup Acquisition 97

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 14, 2021

For example, I believe that Starbucks surprised most people by proving that they could take a commodity business, a coffee shop, and make it a worldwide profit winner, just by justifying premium pricing with a quality product, the right locations, personalized service, and appealing to the professional customer personas.

Pricing 145

Pricing Startup Competition Examples 145

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 27, 2017

Most businesses spend big money testing their brand logo, catchy marketing phrases, and demographics, but spend little time training and validating that their employees can and do deliver memorable experiences to their customers. They have to out-behave and outperform your competition. Keep your team happy to create engaged customers.

Customer 69

Customer Custom Training Satisfaction 69

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 26, 2023

Often, despite your passion and expectation, customers don’t immediately see the value and need that you see, and you have no idea why the initiative is stuck , and what could be the real customer issue or fix. Customers won’t buy what they can’t find or don’t understand. Customers need supporting approvals to fully benefit.

Product 141

Product Services Technical Review Artificial Inteligence 141

TechCrunch LA

APRIL 9, 2020

general manager ( Stefano Benatti ) — filled more orders in the first two months of 2020 than all its sales for 2019, according to Cevolini. The venture is also one of the few e-motorcycle companies drawing engineering tips from competition. Track competition is a secondary arena for Energica. In the U.S.,

Technical Review 277

Technical Review Competition Demand Sales 277