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

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.

Sales 289

Sales Startup Training Pricing 289

socalTECH

MAY 28, 2013

In real life, you can just about bargain a price for anything you want to buy--a car, a house, even that new stereo from your local electronics store. Joe Marrapodi: GreenToe is a name your own price marketplace for products. It''s very similar to the Priceline.com model, where you name your price for a flight or hotel.

Pricing 273

Pricing Product Help Sales 273

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.

Sales 316

Sales Startup Pricing Customer 316

Berkonomics

JANUARY 26, 2017

The rest of the purchase price was concocted from a brew of zero coupon bonds (where the face value is many times the invested amount until the reduced cost bonds mature thirty years later), and borrowing using the target company’s accounts receivable and other assets as collateral for a loan to purchase the company. What power!

Pricing 120

Pricing Sales Tool Equity 120

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 13, 2014

The real milestone, proving the business model, is that first product sold for full price to a total stranger, leaving him happy. 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.

Sales 99

Sales Customer Custom Entrepreneur 99

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.” These decisive moments, and how to respond, are outlined in Robert H. Build a relationship and trust quickly.

Customer 124

Customer Custom Startup Course 124

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.

Sales 286

Sales Newsletter Technical Review Activity 286

InfoChachkie

APRIL 13, 2015

Avoid a simple pricing mistake which could sink your startup. Because I am cheap and I know that car dealers are incentivized by the manufacturer to hit quarterly and annual sales goals. Thus, the value of a sale at the end of a quarter can be significant, if the sale contributes to obtaining a manufacturer''s incentive.

Pricing 100

Pricing Startup Sales SaaS 100

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 16, 2023

Projecting financials is a natural extension of the homework every entrepreneur needs to do on customer opportunity size, product costs, pricing, competition and customer value. Forecast sales-volume expectations. This should always be a “bottoms-up” commitment from your sales team, not your own optimistic guess.

Startup 116

Startup Pricing Sales Statistics 116

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 23, 2012

The real milestone, proving the business model, is that first product sold for full price to a total stranger, leaving him happy. 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.

Sales 96

Sales Customer Custom Pricing 96

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 Customer Custom Pricing 226

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

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

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.

Startup 154

Startup Sales Entrepreneur Customer 154

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 4, 2011

The real milestone, proving the business model, is that first product sold for full price to a total stranger, leaving him happy. 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.

Sales 97

Sales Customer Custom Pricing 97

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 Competition Ideas 115

Berkonomics

AUGUST 3, 2023

Some businesses require very little capital and the founder can self-finance the enterprise and retain 100% of its ownership and control from ignition through liquidity event (startup through sale). Strategic investors validate a business, by their presence creating the very value they pay for with increased price per share purchased.

Venture Capital 295

Venture Capital Startup Class Invest 295

Berkonomics

MAY 16, 2019

There are five niches you can chose when defining your positioning strategy: price, quality, service, innovation, and elegance. Pricing strategies differentiate your business. First, and easiest to understand, is creating differentiation by price. Most anyone else can meet or beat your price any time they wish.

Company 120

Company Companies Pricing Competition 120

TechCrunch LA

APRIL 9, 2020

Before the health crisis shutdown most of Italy, Energica had already seen larger demand for its high-performance e-motos, with a price range of $17,000 to $23,000. general manager ( Stefano Benatti ) — filled more orders in the first two months of 2020 than all its sales for 2019, according to Cevolini. In the U.S.,

Technical Review 277

Technical Review Competition Demand Sales 277

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 30, 2021

While you all recognize that reacting to weak market signals is critical to staying in business and staying competitive, I find that many don’t have the skills and focus to trigger change decisions on a timely basis. You may be getting killed today by customer expectations you never worried about just a few years ago.

Marketing 162

Marketing Social Media Metrics Customer 162

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 29, 2023

On the product side, once you have a proven product and business model, all you need is money to build inventory, and a sales and marketing operation to drive the business. With services, scaling the business often implies cloning yourself, since you are the intellectual property and the competitive advantage.

Startup 111

Startup Training Services Writing 111

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 5, 2021

If you don’t have a destination, don’t waste your money trying to get there, and don’t expect anyone to support you along the way Projecting financials is a natural extension of the homework every entrepreneur needs to do on customer opportunity size, product costs, pricing, competition and customer value.

Startup 147

Startup Pricing Sales Statistics 147

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 9, 2023

When entrepreneurs introduce new products to the market, their passion and conviction often leads them to assume that every potential customer will see the immediate need and value, and will quickly adopt the solution. The more revolutionary the solution, the more important it is to educate customers on a solution’s existence and value.

Case Study 89

Case Study Customer Custom Study 89

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 5, 2020

He lays out seven thinking strategies for both entrepreneurs and employees that will make them business winners: Focus on the customers at all times. Corporate thinkers often become preoccupied with doing their jobs and following rules, not pleasing customers. They don’t realize that customers are the source of all business payback.

Entrepreneur 117

Entrepreneur Sales Customer Custom 117

Berkonomics

OCTOBER 21, 2021

Salaries or hourly wages must be within reasonable limits set by the industry and matched by the competition, both regionally and for the same job classification. And there are some industries where tools such as stock options are considered mandatory for a company to be competitive. Some obvious qualifiers.

Design 156

Design Examples Competition Pricing 156

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 31, 2012

Jeff (also an HBS alum) co-teaches the LTV course with Professor Eisenmann about a student of theirs who had written a blog post about sales taking on some of my previous assertions. That student is Erin McCann who formerly worked in sales at Google, so she has some ground to stand on in her assertions.

Startup 319

Startup Sales Course Competition 319

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 19, 2014

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 recent book, “ The New Experts: Win Today''s Newly Empowered Customers.” These decisive moments, and how to respond, are outlined in Robert H. Build a relationship and trust quickly.

Customer 98

Customer Custom Entrepreneur Startup 98

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 25, 2019

I’m more convinced that technology merely enables disruption, and changing customer interests and needs really causes it. Other companies keep the focus on their customers, and seem to thrive on disruption, much less survive. They make it their top business priority to understand, anticipate, and gratify customers’ needs.

Customer 54

Customer Custom Technical Review Design 54

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 15, 2020

When entrepreneurs introduce new products to the market, their passion and conviction often leads them to assume that every potential customer will see the immediate need and value, and will quickly adopt the solution. The more revolutionary the solution, the more important it is to educate customers on a solution’s existence and value.

Case Study 174

Case Study Startup Customer Custom 174

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 30, 2015

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.” These decisive moments, and how to respond, are outlined in Robert H. Build a relationship and trust quickly.

Customer 101

Customer Custom Startup Course 101

TechCrunch LA

DECEMBER 8, 2020

He did note that in the four markets where the company has gone live since launching its business in January 2019 — San Diego, Los Angeles, the Inland Empire , and Sacramento — has yielded an annualized revenue run rate of over $400 million in gross merchandise value (the total value of home sales transacted on its platform).

Sales 282

Sales Demand San Diego Funding 282

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 3, 2020

On the product side, once you have a proven product and business model, all you need is money to build inventory, and a sales and marketing operation to drive the business. With services, scaling the business often implies cloning yourself, since you are the intellectual property and the competitive advantage.

Startup 174

Startup Training Services Writing 174

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 7, 2020

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.

Entrepreneur 131

Entrepreneur Outsource Development Startup Competition 131

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 12, 2018

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.” These decisive moments, and how to respond, are outlined in Robert H. Build a relationship and trust quickly.

Customer 52

Customer Custom Startup Course 52

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 19, 2011

He is very hands-on and helpful – especially for any company looking into customer acquisition. People want to invest in people they trust – once you’ve made money for someone you can always go back, and even get better pricing. o Everything is for sale but it’s the price that moves the timing. we both love Jason).

Acquisition 304

Acquisition Startup Customer Custom 304

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 7, 2021

Every entrepreneur’s first priority should be the alignment of interests across the range of constituents required for success – partners, investors, customers, vendors, and employees. If you have had to pivot from the consumer market to enterprise customers, that requires new pricing models and new sales channels.

Social Media 143

Social Media Startup Framework Course 143