Berkonomics

MARCH 25, 2021

We know that one of the ways we hold onto our customers is if there are high switching costs to move away to a competitor. Do you have an estimate of the cost for a potential customer to switch to your side? Offer incentives to existing customers to stay, and for competitor’s customers to switch. So, email was out.

Competition 156

Competition Customer Custom Email 156

Berkonomics

MARCH 10, 2022

Customer empowerment is moving so fast nowadays that many of us are running to just catch up. But don’t close your eyes to the fact that your customers have grown to expect your products or services in the form of…. Entering the age of mass customization. The post Customer empowerment? Expectations rise with technology.

Customer 156

Customer Custom Demand Blogging 156

Berkonomics

MARCH 10, 2010

Your customers know what they want more than you do. Find one to teach you. This insight came from personal experience and from a good friend who advanced the notion of the “teacher-customer” years ago. Together we would work out solutions in the form of new functions, new controls, new reports, and new safeguards.

Customer 149

Customer Custom Design Conference 149

Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 21, 2023

Your customers know what they want more than you do. This week’s insight came from personal experience and from a good friend who advanced the notion of the “teacher-customer” years ago. The customer would be the first to receive the new functionality in a new release. Providing feedback to your teacher customer.

Customer 156

Customer Custom Design Conference 156

Berkonomics

JULY 19, 2018

Dell is a great example of emphasis upon fast, creating a customized computer in 48 hours or less, bringing in assemblies and components just-in-time to make the assembly line. Dell’s response would be something like “Quality custom computers more quickly than the competition.” How will your customers react to your positioning?

Competition 226

Competition Examples Customer Custom 226

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

Partly out of the fact that in 1 week I depart for England to speak at LeWeb, attend our DataSift board meeting and generally make myself available to the DataSift team to meet their customers, partners and employees. Email updates frequently. Key point – if your emails are as long as my blog posts you’re forked.

Tips 365

Tips Email Venture Capital CTO Coach 365

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.

Customer 147

Customer Custom Technical Review Metrics 147

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 Research Sales 120

Berkonomics

JULY 4, 2013

But for most, the true sign of success and potential for even more is in the landing of a major account, one that validates the pricing, quality and competitive advantages of a company’s offering. For this reason alone, it makes sense for most of us to aim high once we have worked the kinks out of our offering with smaller customers.

.Net 235

.Net Resource Competition Customer 235

Berkonomics

JULY 6, 2017

Know your market and competition, or don’t spend a dime on anything else. In this case, the competition was not from a company but a new technology. When I listen to a pitch from an enthusiastic entrepreneur or read the summary of a business plan, one of the first questions I ask is about the strength of the competition.

Competition 266

Competition Research Summary Pricing 266

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 22, 2014

They were a little too fierce in their competitive practices against Lyft to sign up drivers. As somebody who has to rub shoulders with big tech companies often I can tell you that there is much blood spilled in the competitive trenches of Apple, Twitter, Facebook, Google and so on. I doubt they have a customer problem.

Press 418

Press Journal Startup Training 418

Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 19, 2015

Customer empowerment is moving so fast nowadays that many of us are running to just catch up. Blame the Internet for this rise in customer expectations. But don’t close your eyes to the fact that your customers have grown to expect your products or services in the form of…. WHAT I want, WHEN I want, and WHERE I want.’.

Customer 120

Customer Custom Demand Email 120

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

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 17, 2010

Know your market and competition, or don’t spend a dime on anything else. I have stated previously that I love absolutes – statements with no wiggle room for gray-area responses. Fast forward several years to 1996… [Email readers continue here.] There is no competition.” Positioning.

Marketing 247

Marketing Competition Research Summary 247

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 31, 2012

I got an email recently from my friend & fellow VC, Jeff Bussgang from Flybridge Capital Partners in Boston. My list of excuses includes: product, pricing, competition and lack of sales support. This includes presentations, ROI calculators, competitive analyses and so forth. And that leads me to today’s post.

Startup 319

Startup Sales Course Competition 319

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 14, 2018

I know that you can use an email system with this to track my open rate, whether I forwarded the email, the IP address where I read it, whether I was on a mobile device or a wired computer and you can tell who else read the document. Competition isn’t won or lost by your marketing decks? What should not be in your deck?

Funding 239

Funding Venture Capital IP Email 239

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 20, 2009

The promised to follow up with: calls, using your product, talking to customers or “noodle on things.&# Will they? You would never go see an important executive at a customer and then sit around and wait for them to realize how great you are. So don’t expect an unprompted email or phone call next week.

Venture Capital 277

Venture Capital Startup Email News 277

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 25, 2019

The new era of highly connected and interactive technology is changing not only how business employees interact with customers, but also how they interact with each other, and with their company. I am happy to see reports that young companies are leading the way in these trends, on both the customer and the employee side.

Competition 127

Competition Case Study Platform Yahoo 127

Eric Greenspan

JANUARY 13, 2014

They have the worst customer service of any company I deal with. If you have an issue renaming or merging a page, you get an email that says “denied.” Can you email them? They know it and so do their competition. Creator of mind blowing customer experiences. Facebook doesn’t seem to care.

Social Network 184

Social Network Email Competition Web 184

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 31, 2011

Historically you are your email address. Think about your local news anchor saying, “if you want to get in touch email me at xxxx.” Nearly every day now I see public figures telling people their Twitter identity in stead of Facebook, email or other forms of identity. Who are you on the web? ” Sure.

News 324

News Web Email Startup 324

Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 9, 2017

Email readers, continue here…]. You’ll have less competition. Competition is good, but – if there are hundreds of businesses out there that already have gotten to and penetrated this niche – you’re going to find it hard to get through the marketing noise. Keep your customer in mind.

Marketing 266

Marketing Advertising Resource Social Media 266

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 25, 2013

Competitive sportswoman. Kara on one side of the table showing me market sizes, competitive dynamics, product roadmaps, pricing plans for physical products with COGS and gross margins. Soleil returns emails at 1.30am. Remember, it’s about Lines, Not Dots. I first met Kara 5 years ago. Stanford MBA. Showing me designs.

Startup 398

Startup Design Downey Activity 398

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 27, 2011

If you care about accessing customers, reaching an audience, communicating your vision, influencing people in your industry, marketing your services or just plain engaging in a dialog with others in your industry a blog is a great way to achieve this. I’ll bet your customers, business partners or suppliers would love similar.

Blogging 373

Blogging Startup Writing Venture Capital 373

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 11, 2013

As I visit the websites of many startups, as well as more mature businesses, I still too often see a “contact” page offering nothing but a sterile form for customers to submit, never to be heard from again. Customers are not all like you, and they have choices, so a “one size fits all” customer service is no longer a viable option.

Social Media 99

Social Media Customer Custom Media 99

Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 20, 2014

An estimate of the number of customers, of the amount of traffic to your website, of the numbers of products sold or hours spent in development – there are thousands of areas where a number sounds better when it is larger. Sometimes it seems to you to be just an unimportant little stretch of the facts. Yes, we’ve seen gray areas.

Customer 189

Customer Custom Examples Email 189

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 6, 2012

As I visit the websites of many startups, as well as more mature businesses, I still too often see a “contact” page offering nothing but a sterile form for customers to submit, never to be heard from again. Customers are not all like you, and they have choices, so a “one size fits all” customer service is no longer a viable option.

Social Media 91

Social Media Customer Custom Media 91

Berkonomics

FEBRUARY 21, 2011

But for most, the true sign of success and potential for even more is in the landing of a major account, one that validates the pricing, quality and competitive advantages of a company’s offering. For this reason alone, it makes sense for most of us to aim high once we have worked the kinks out of our offering with smaller customers.

.Net 166

.Net Resource Competition Customer 166

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 11, 2014

I tell people that they need to blog about their industry to drive customers and not blog to their egos to drive their peer group to their blogs. If you are early in a platform (Zynga to Facebook, AngryBirds to iOS, Maker Studios to YouTube) you catch a major marketing wave where acquiring customers and growing revenue is exponential.

Technical Review 384

Technical Review SEM SEO Marketing 384

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

In the same year they won Business Insider’s Startup competition. And because I wanted Ethan to be able to attract a great team, build & iterate a product, test it with initial customers and refine his strategy before having to take the wrappers off of his company. I was standing with him when he won the TechCrunch 50 award.

CTO Coach 359

CTO Coach Google CTO Hire Yammer 359

Berkonomics

JULY 30, 2011

Second, some of the original employees, occasionally one or two friends of the founders, are discovered to be falling behind as more professional employees show them up to be less competitive in their jobs. So management reorganizes the structure of the organization to fit the new needs of the growing enterprise.

Startup 222

Startup Customer Custom Funding 222

Berkonomics

MARCH 15, 2012

One way to mitigate this is by using early money to create a prototype, to perform market research, to complete the first generation of the product, or to deliver the service to a satisfied customer. Email readers, continue here.] Third: Management risk. And fifth: Competitive risk. Second: Market risk.

Outsource Development 200

Outsource Development Ideas Resource Patents 200

Berkonomics

JUNE 17, 2011

Even small community service-providers can be sold to buyers hungry to get into a business already in revenue with a steady customer base. Email readers continue here.] Is your value proposition for an eventual buyer that you have some secret sauce that allows you to compete more effectively against competition?

Equity 209

Equity Class Email Competition 209

Berkonomics

JULY 9, 2011

Is your product or service one that responds to a customer need, real or perceived? In general, there are three types of products or services: those a customer needs, those a customer wants, and those a customer believes he does not want or need. Email readers continue here. ] Why buy MINE? Why buy it?”.

Sales 222

Sales Customer Custom Pricing 222

Berkonomics

NOVEMBER 23, 2012

Your employees, your shareholders, your customers, and your suppliers are all driven by this question. Email readers, continue here.] Suppliers need you to be a good customer, to pay a reasonable price for goods or services, to pay your bills on time, and of course to reorder when the time comes.

Course 176

Course Customer Custom Email 176

socalTECH

OCTOBER 23, 2012

We don't need for you to be breakeven company, but a business with paying customers is great validation in itself. I think the right team and network are very important, as is traction, validated by customers. They're pretty competitive about deals. TX Zhuo: Someone on our team will try to respond to every email.

Funding 253

Funding Startup Invest Commerce 253

Berkonomics

JULY 26, 2018

Is your product or service one that responds to a customer need, real or perceived? In general, there are three types of products or services: those a customer needs, those a customer wants, an d those a customer believes he does not want or need. An example of how not to do it. Why buy now?

Sales 226

Sales Customer Custom Pricing 226

Berkonomics

JULY 5, 2018

Even small community service-providers can be sold to buyers hungry to get into a business already in revenue with a steady customer base. Email readers, continue here…] All businesses and their management should be aware and perhaps planning for the end game, and that includes boards of directors as well.

Class 226

Class Email Competition Entrepreneur 226