Berkonomics

SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

Your first customers for any product or service form your reference base, the important group of allies that your marketing and salespeople rely upon when attempting to create buzz and make a mass market for a new product. Send flowers to the staff in the department using the product for the first time if appropriate.

Resource 156

Resource Customer Custom Product 156

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 3, 2010

I’d like to talk about Crocodile Salesmen in 3 scenarios: 1) when YOU are selling (or someone on your team), 2) when you are trying to recruit a sales person. But how to apply “listening&# in a sales meeting? Even better if you have permission to discuss actual names as a “reference client.&#.

Sales 314

Sales Startup Venture Capital Customer 314

socalTECH

MARCH 19, 2014

Sales tax compliance is not a typical sexy startup area. So, it was a surprise when a number of smart, insider angels -- including Roy Rubin (founder of Magento, which he sold to eBay), and Dan Rose (VP of Partnerships at Facebook)--put their money behind TaxJar (www.taxjar.com), a San Diego startup developing sales tax compliance software.

Sales 149

Sales Software Startup Commerce 149

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 4, 2009

Many entrepreneurs who start technology companies are product people, technologists or savvy business people who worked previously for a larger company. Most start-up entrepreneurs have little or no sales experience. But through nearly a decade of startups I learned that sales comes down to three essential elements: 1.

Sales 319

Sales Startup Platform Tips 319

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2021

You can listen to the entire conversation above or via this link , but I also wanted to highlight one topic we discussed that I feel strongly about, which is how I think enterprise sales and venture fundraising are basically the same muscle. And again, just like in enterprise sales, this is all about differentiation ?—?what

Sales 375

Sales Startup Invest Funding 375

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 6, 2023

Make sure everyone accurately posts their role with your startup on social media profiles, resumes, and references. Visit reference customers, partners, and vendors. For reference, here is a quick summary of key elements which most investors include in their due diligence process: Key personnel review. Status of the solution.

Technical Review 118

Technical Review Startup Satisfaction Invest 118

socalTECH

MAY 2, 2017

He was just trying to collect more data for his startup on what was happening on real estate deals that the company had been referring to brokers. We did a test where our team would only focus on collecting emails, and emailing those prospects, and correlating the number of responses to the number of potential sales.

Sales 145

Sales Startup Email Tool 145

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 13, 2019

According to Cornerstone OnDemand, the new, 26,000 square foot office is in Sandy, Utah, which is a suburb of Salt Lake City in an area where the tech industry refers to itself as the "Silicon Slopes".

Cornerstone OnDemand 124

Cornerstone OnDemand Santa Monica Resource Software Development 124

Berkonomics

AUGUST 3, 2017

Your first customers for any product or service form your reference base, the important group of allies that your marketing and sales people rely upon when attempting to create buzz and make a mass market for a new product. Send flowers to the staff in the department using the product for the first time if appropriate.

Customer 243

Customer Custom Resource Sales 243

InfoChachkie

JULY 4, 2011

Man or woman, the tactics deployed by Sam are applicable to any sales situation and can be put to use by any salesperson, irrespective of their gender. For sake of grammatical convenience, I will refer to Sam as a male in the remainder of this entry. He is so confident in his green eggs and ham product that he cannot help but smile.

Sales 219

Sales Entrepreneur Startup Product 219

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 24, 2021

Make sure everyone accurately posts their role with your startup on social media profiles, resumes, and references. Visit reference customers, partners, and vendors. For reference, here is a quick summary of key elements which most investors include in their due diligence process: Key personnel review. Status of the solution.

Technical Review 151

Technical Review Startup Satisfaction Invest 151

Tech.Co

JUNE 22, 2021

For publishers, it offers a potentially lucrative revenue stream — especially if the publishers can manage to refer potential customers at scale on relatively big-ticket items. This means that readers could purchase products from retailers that use Shopify's platform without ever leaving the publisher's site.

Marketing 177

Marketing Buzzfeed Guide Platform 177

InfoChachkie

JANUARY 5, 2015

A recurring entrepreneurial challenge is to determine the optimal price of a new product, especially absent a directly competitive alternative. Even sales reps will invoke a cost plus logic when negotiating with me on behalf of their customers. Anecdotally, it seems that SaaS products often behave as Giffen goods.

Pricing 100

Pricing Product Startup Customer 100

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 18, 2021

Ask everyone to update their resume, and personally call probable references, so there are no surprises. Explain that they may be called, and use the opportunity to check their satisfaction with your company and your product. That means questioning each of these key players, and calling references or prior associates.

Technical Review 152

Technical Review Startup Satisfaction Summary 152

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 30, 2022

In fact, it’s all about the “focus” required to get early stage technology products across the deadly chasm from early adopters to mainstream customers. Missions and products that are too broad confuse your team, your customers, and potential investors. Product development chasm. Marketing and sales chasm.

Startup 150

Startup Technical Review Customer Custom 150

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 20, 2013

In my first enterprise software company we developed a methodology for sales that we called PUCCKA , which I wrote about previously. Having a good sales methodology can help you ensure your company runs more disciplined campaigns and focuses scarce resources on your best opportunities. It the second rule of sales, “Why Buy Me?”

Sales 336

Sales Startup Competition Customer 336

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 4, 2013

In other words, once they are convinced that the product works, they assume their price, sales channel, and marketing will bring in the customers. For example, one CEO I know gave away his software product to the first ten customers. You won’t succeed with a product that is too expensive for the market.

Product 94

Product Pricing Customer Custom 94

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 29, 2023

The critical success factors for a product business are well known, starting with selling every unit with a gross margin of 50 percent or more, building a patent and other intellectual property, and continuous product improvement. Low cost and low margin products can be winners, if the volume is high enough.

Startup 111

Startup Training Services Writing 111

Berkonomics

DECEMBER 30, 2021

It would not be handling the expensive hardware that is part of its required sale at all, other than to recommend alternatives and charge for coordinating the purchases of differing supplier products, oversee the installation. What if the hardware manufacturer had serious problems with product quality on site?

Entrepreneur 156

Entrepreneur Training Invest Email 156

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 21, 2013

help you integrate your product with other systems making it harder for your product to be replaced by competitors. So when I meet with GRP portfolio companies that do enterprise sales I try to emphasize the following: 1. Only Work on Projects That Support Your Core Product Effort. Protect Your Intellectual Property.

Software Review 321

Software Review Software Services Company 321

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 1, 2017

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Consider licensing your product or intellectual property, and “white labeling.”

Develop 70

Develop Development Product Startup 70

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 6, 2023

Many entrepreneurs are so enamored with their product vision that they believe their own hype and are convinced that the market for their solution is so huge that no one will ask them for independent market research data. These are also important for your product positioning in the competitor section of your business plan.

Statistics 120

Statistics Research Report Newsletter 120

Tech.Co

MARCH 25, 2022

Another reason could be a steep drop in sales growth rate since the start of the pandemic, when many people suddenly became interested in getting groceries dropped off at their door. Instacart cites “market turbulence” and a need to attract talent as reasons why it has reassessed. Instacart's New Direction.

Advertising 116

Advertising Tool .Net Google 116

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 3, 2020

The critical success factors for a product business are well known, starting with selling every unit with a gross margin of 50 percent or more, building a patent and other intellectual property, and continuous product improvement. Low cost and low margin products can be winners, if the volume is high enough.

Startup 174

Startup Training Services Writing 174

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 13, 2022

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Consider licensing your product or intellectual property, and “white labeling.”

Startup 136

Startup Technical Review Equity Incubator 136

socalTECH

DECEMBER 11, 2018

San Diego-based Wildfire Systems , led by startup veteran Jordan Glazier , has developed software which product referrals and automatically transform them into trackable links across email, text messaging, chat, and social messaging. Those references drive trillions of dollars of commerce. They're doing that billions of times a day.

San Diego 159

San Diego Social Media Commerce Snapchat 159

Berkonomics

JUNE 27, 2019

As a group, we set a bar of fifteen percent as the minimum amount of time each week that a good CEO should spend reaching out to the company’s key customers in a proactive attempt to find issues, trends, unmet product needs, and of course create bonds that make their jumping to a competitor more difficult.

Customer 120

Customer Custom Course Email 120

InfoChachkie

OCTOBER 13, 2009

Sales – Many publishers, including Grit, encouraged newspaper boys to create new routes and expand existing ones by aggressively selling subscriptions to non-subscribers. This pay-per-newspaper formula directly rewarded the children’s sales efforts and sparked a life-long entrepreneurial fire in generations of newspaper boys.

Web 2.0 222

Web 2.0 Web Sales Outsource Development 222

Tech.Co

APRIL 15, 2020

Furniture, Home, Home Improvement, Lawn & Garden, Pet Products, and Pantry rates have dropped from 8% to 3%. If you wanted to buy a pair of Samsung Galaxy Buds+ through Samsung's site via an affiliate link on Commission Junction , the referring site would typically make somewhere between $8.99-$11.99 from the same sale.

Sites 138

Sites Technical Review Startup Guide 138

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 7, 2014

I spend a lot of time with startups and thus hear many companies talk about their approach to sales and their interactions with customers. Given customers & sales are the lifeblood of any organization you’d imagine everybody would respect their customers. Contrast that with a VC conversation I had. You can’t.

Customer 341

Customer Custom Venture Capital Software Review 341

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 25, 2011

There’s a line of thinking in Silicon Valley that you should build product businesses rather than services businesses. They have created two internal technology “products&# and wanted to figure out how they could turn their services business into a product business that could be financed. This team is talented.

Services 332

Services Venture Capital IP Startup 332

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 14, 2020

Many entrepreneurs are so enamored with their product vision that they believe their own hype, and are convinced that the market for their solution is so huge that no one will ask them for independent market research data. These are also important for your product positioning in the competitor section of your business plan.

Marketing 157

Marketing Statistics Research Report 157

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

Over time you start to figure out who you customers are and how to sell to them or how to get them to adopt your products if you’re a consumer-oriented startup. how much energy to put into channel partners vs. direct sales. how to build an initial sales organization. how to market our products and company.

Startup 325

Startup Sales Technical Review Software Review 325

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

Of course it is super helpful if a VC can drop you in to important people for business development, recruiting, PR, sales and eventually M&A. Simply put – I’d be in search of a VC who had an intuitive sense of my product, my customers, my organizational issues, my competitors, etc. Connections? EQ and Team Leadership?

Venture Capital 364

Venture Capital Coach Writing SaaS 364

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 4, 2022

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Consider licensing your product or intellectual property, and “white labeling.”

Tips 104

Tips Startup Technical Review Equity 104

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 28, 2018

There has always been tension between CPG (consumer packaged goods) companies and the retailers who sell their products to consumers. If a consumer will pay a fixed price for a product or service then the battle over who gets the margin in any sale is between the person who merchandises a product and the person who manufactures it.

Product 296

Product Course Customer Custom 296

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 27, 2019

In fact, it’s all about the “focus” required to get early stage technology products across the deadly chasm from early adopters to mainstream customers. Missions and products that are too broad confuse your team, your customers, and potential investors. Product development chasm. Marketing and sales chasm.

Technical Review 102

Technical Review Customer Custom Satisfaction 102