Posts filed under 'Early Customer Stage'
February 17th, 2010
I can always tell when I am feeling stressed because I dream about being back in school taking an exam I haven’t studied for. Although to be candid some of those dreams are closer to suppressed memories than unrealized anxieties bubbling up from my unconscious.
But a year or two ago I had a dream a while ago about a tiger that I keep turning over in my mind.
A tiger is pacing in a cage, but it’s not a square cage, it’s more of a maze.
It’s not in a zoo, more like a warehouse or strangely configured storage unit. The floors are smooth cold concrete.
The tiger is trapped in a maze of walls of iron bars and plexiglass.
The tiger starts out in a section that’s primarily iron bars with a few walls of plexiglass.
It leaps against the bars and can’t break out.
Then it sees what appears to be an opening and runs into a plexiglass wall, which it can’t break through either.
But running into the the plexiglass a few times makes it more cautious.
So it paces,
alternately sniffing and growling,
confused and angry,
trying to find a way out.
Finally it comes to an opening that just has strip of masking tape on the floor.
And there it sits, convinced that this is some new barrier that’s also uncrossable.
Any resemblance to recent legs of your entrepreneurial journey (or mine) is entirely coincidental.
February 9th, 2010
Three true stories:
We were driving back from a sales call and the CTO said “I don’t understand. We won the argument. Why didn’t we win the sale?” He was very disappointed at their stupidity and stubbornness.
Different startup, I had been recruited by a new CEO as a part of a turnaround. A team had gone off to meet with a new prospect and I asked the sales rep how the meeting had gone. He said “It was one of those meetings where the actual purpose of the meeting became figuring out who the smartest person in the room was: one of our guys or one of theirs. After a while it was time to leave.”
About a decade ago while I was still at Cisco I got invited to a large meeting with an outside vendor. Cisco had two software vendors providing similar but incompatible tools that solved the same problem in different ways. Times were tight: folks were being laid off and projects were getting canceled. Our inability to be able to share scripts and models between these two tools meant that management had decided we needed to standardize on one. This was a meeting for all of the supporters of tool A to compare notes and develop a common set of reasons why it should be the standard. The vendor sent a large contingent and there were perhaps two dozen engineers from different groups who were concerned. What a disaster. The vendor essentially started off by implying that the users had done a poor job of educating management as to the value of the tool and listed a number of improvements and techniques that they had “taught” us. After perhaps ten or fifteen minutes, someone spoke up and said, “Hey, wait a minute, that was an idea that we gave you! You incorporated into version 7, but we had that first.” The meeting degenerated into an angry shouting match and the default plan became engineers would refuse to switch to the other tool. Not a winning strategy in a downturn as it turned out.
Diagnosis: in each case the startup didn’t view the customer as a partner, and somehow believed that they would succeed by convincing them that they were smarter. This is called the “bringing fire to the savages” sales and marketing model. Variants include viewing your product as a luxury good “not everyone can own our product” or an IQ test (“not everyone is smart enough to be able to use our product”). None of them are particularly effective in generating revenue or reference customers but they do preserve the world view of the founders that they are all a bunch of really smart people.
Three specific antidotes:
- Focus on understanding the customer’s problem. Make sure you can describe their problem before you start to describe your solution. Test for other symptoms that they have not mentioned that you have heard from other customers. Do all of this before you mention any features or benefits of your offering.
- Understand specifically what steps they have already taken to address the problem and what constitutes their perception of the status quo.
- When you propose your solution, make it as compatible with their current work process and practices as you can, and incorporate any of their ideas into your product roadmap that you believe may benefit other customers or prospects. This minimizes their transition cost and their sense of loss.
We help software firms explain their new product to the right prospects in ways that convince them to become reference customers. If you have a new product and are having difficulty getting people to understand what it can do, please give us a call: we can help.
Related posts:
October 12th, 2009
I am happy to be able to offer another guest blog by Nanette Collins, her first was on “Volunteering, Lessons Learned from the Trenches.” Nanette is an entrepreneur in her own right, she is the principal at Nanette V. Collins Marketing and PR with offices in Boston and San Francisco and one the web at www.nvc.com
It’s All About Corporate Culture by Nanette Collins
In the 15 years that I have owned a marketing consulting business, my focus has been on working with entrepreneurs and startups in the EDA and semiconductor area. This has given me a ringside seat to grand successes, gut-wrenching failures and plenty of case study material. I have seen a lot and learned a few things in the process.
If an entrepreneur were to approach me for advice on the first steps to starting a business, I’d recommend thinking carefully about the kind of culture he or she wants to create. This effort will set the tone and help lay a foundation for success. A corporate culture based on a strong value system and an implicit understanding of ethical business practices will engender loyalty from the team, customers and various other stakeholders.
Corporate culture is much more than Six Sigma, the business management strategy du jour, or Quality Circles implemented by many large companies in the 1980s. It’s also more than the detailed corporate identity list of must haves –– name, logo, tag line, website and so on.
Instead, it’s a careful assessment by a company’s management on how it should operate and be perceived, based on a standard set of ideals that reflect its goals and objectives. The corporate culture should be fluid enough to be able to integrate attitudes, behavior, experiences and personal and cultural values.
A great example is a long-gone EDA startup called Viewlogic that hired the Boston Public Relations firm where I worked as an account executive in the mid 1980s. What quickly became apparent was the thoughtfulness and care the five founders –– Sal Carcia, Alain Hanover, Will Herman, Ron Maxwell and K.S. (Sri) Sriram –– had placed on building the company’s corporate culture. Maybe it was instinct. It may have been good management skills. More likely, it was the experience that they gained from working for a large corporation before going off on their own.
Whatever the motivation, it was the right thing to do, but it took a year’s worth of meticulous planning before they launched themselves. This company taught me many things, but the most valuable insight was the need to pay attention to corporate culture.
As a regular visitor to this company long acquired by a larger vendor, it was clear to me that the focus on corporate culture instilled a set of shared values with employees. The entire team seemed to have a set of customs and traditions that was this company’s and none other, which made it a terrific client and business partner.
Employees were dedicated, focused and all had a sense of purpose. That’s because they understood where they fit within the culture and knew what was considered appropriate behavior. During new employee orientation, Will Herman proudly carried into the session a three-ring binder with the presentation on the company’s corporate culture. This emphasis helped the company navigate through tough times and encouraged the team to keep going. After all, even with a well-conceived corporate culture, it wasn’t immune to the vagaries of a new business.
As the company grew in size and got more successful, a plaque was hung in the reception area outlining its five-point value system, underscoring the corporate culture. Many of the specific points seem to have been forgotten over time, but there are a few that stand out:
- The first is an emphasis on professionalism and personal integrity that started with the founders who set the example for all.
- A focus on ensuring a return to all stakeholders –– investors, employees, customers and partners –– may seem obvious, but well worth articulating to the entire team.
- Providing value to customers may seem obvious as well, but who hasn’t experience lousy quality support from a formerly valued vendor? In recent years, many a large consumer company has been resoundingly criticized for their lack of customer service. A corporate culture focused on successful customers has to be a winning strategy.
I have worked with more than 30 startups and see too few founders give enough consideration to the culture of the firm that they are building, an unfortunate miscalculation. Too many entrepreneurs seem to think this is trite, quaintly old fashioned or don’t consider it at all. And yet, the benefits are numerous, from employee recruiting and retention to loyal customers and repeat business. With a strong corporate culture, there will be no ambiguity about behavior or ethics or what a company stands for.
Just as every startup has a product strategy and roadmap, it should also develop a set of corporate guidelines. It may be the blueprint for success.
I have included a 1985 article on Viewlogic for some background for readers who may be unfamiliar. The company was a pioneer in EDA but does not have a Wikipedia page or definitive history on-line that I could find. It’s from “D&T Scene,” IEEE Design and Test of Computers, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 10-15, May/June 1985, doi:10.1109/MDT.1985.294730
Viewlogic unveils first CAE product at show Viewlogic Systems, a start-up company formed in October 1984, will show its first product, a desktop CAE system based on the IBM PC, at this year’s Design Automation Conference. The company also announced it has received $1.5 million in first-round financing, provided by company founders and venture-capital firms.
Viewlogic was founded by Alain Hanover, Salvatore Carcia, Ronald Maxwell, Sri Sriram, and William Herman, all from Digital Equipment Corporation. The company claims that its software addresses key elements of a design engineer’s desktop needs, providing facilities for design, documentation, and communication.
An open architecture approach gives users access to a reliable electronic design automation system that fits into existing CAE environments.
Sriram, Viewlogic’s director of marketing, says that the key benefit of the system is that it is priced at a level that allows each design engineer to have a system at his desk, where it is always accessible. The PC-based system is powerful enough for many applications, but the software, written in C, is also available in a version that runs on a DEC VAX operating under VMS for more demanding applications.
The software is currently being evaluated at five beta sites.
October 6th, 2009
I continue to run into folks who find themselves encouraged to launching a consulting career by their former employer and what is proving to be a very deep recession. Here are three books I recommend to them to help get some perspective on the career they now find themselves in.
I have a related blog post from October of last year on “Customer Development for a Consulting Practice in a Downturn” and another one from July of 2007 on “Networking in Silicon Valley” that is still accurate.
October 1st, 2009
This week I have been developing content for a client’s website. We are helping them formulate a message that is intended to explain both their knowledge of their customers’ problems and how they are able to help.
Good marketing is really just good content.
It focuses on your customers’ problems and how they will benefit from your offering. It is not about your product features. It answers all of the questions–or at least all of the common questions–a customer will have they have as they consider buying your product or services.
Good marketing material should be useful, interesting, and even funny to your customers. Material should be clear and concise, it should be use the language that your customers normally use to talk about their challenges and their needs.
Here are a couple of examples we have worked with our clients on over the last year:
July 15th, 2009
With Athol Foden’s encouragement I have submitted the following session (links added) for this year’s Silicon Valley Code Camp:
Software Startup Maturity Checklist
This session is for both aspiring and active entrepreneurs. We will walk through a 36 point checklist that covers Product Development, Customer Development, and Business Operations. You will leave with a better understanding of where you are today and what some logical next steps are for each of these stages:
Primary focus is on bootstrapping, there will also some discussion of what is required for a business to deserve outside investment. If you are thinking about doing a startup or you are underway and looking for a quick diagnostic on what to focus on next, this session will offer practical guidance based on the specifics of your situation.
This session does not require but will build on Athol Foden’s session on “From Code to Complete Product to Brand.”
Follow this link to indicate your interest in attending. It will be based on the Startup Maturity Checklist which is the first module in our “Idea to Revenue” workshop. Code Camp is Saturday October 3 and Sunday October 4 at Foothill College 12345 El Monte Road (Parking Lot 5) Los Altos Hills, CA 94022
As the description indicated, my session is a companion to Athol’s “From Code to Complete Product to Brand” which also looks good:
Before you can go out and market your code, you need to productize it. Whether it is for a small downloadable utility or an enterprise application, software seldom sells itself. Even for Open Source, it has to be packaged, promoted and presented correctly… and that is the start of your branding for the long term. For startups, product and company may both be dependent on this proper execution. This overview session will give you the highlights and a check list to do a proper product packaging and launch. For startups, continue this subject with Sean Murphy’s startup checklist talk
And follow this link to indicate interest in Athol’s.
Update Mon-Sep-2: The “SW Startup Maturity Checklist“ session is set for Sunday 1pm, Oct 4 2009 in Room 5501 at SV Code Camp.
Register here: Session 201 Sun-Oct-4-2009 Room 5501
June 28th, 2009
The suggestion that you you should “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door,” mis-attributed to Emerson, has destroyed more startups than any other I can think of. It suggests a lone inventor whose product is instantly in demand. Michael Schrage has been studying innovation for more than two decades. What follows are some excerpts from three interviews that outline very different approach to successful innovation, one that stresses collaboration both within the startup (or new product team) and between the startup and its early customers.
Julie Anixter interviewed Michael Schrage on Nov-16-1999 for Tom Peters blog and asked “What or who prepared you for the work you currently do?” (emphasis and links added)
All of this work can really be traced back to when I was the first technology reporter for the Washington Post from l983-l987. I was covering Silicon Valley and Route 128, and doing the standard story about the entrepreneur with the great idea that launched the business.
Then I realized that the basic story pattern was, well, wrong.
I’ve always been interested in innovation…But what I saw—company after company—was that the innovation wasn’t just about creative individuals, but about creative relationships—and particularly collaborative relationships.
And collaborative relationships need shared space (any collaborative medium—cocktail napkin to computer modeling that serves as communication space that two or more people share). After my first book came out, “Shared Minds”, I realized that I had to focus on this … if we care about the future of collaboration we have to care about the future of shared space … there’s a real ecology there. Then prototypes became a fabulous vehicle for interacting within the process of innovation, within a shared space.
When I was a new reporter I was concerned with getting good quotes. Now, when I work with teams and consult, the gap between what people say and what they do is far more interesting. I became much more concerned about behaviors around prototyping, whether it’s designers around the screen or marketers around models; design behaviors take a big shift around prototypes.
Behavior changes matters more than technological change.
Michael Schrage on Innovation in Ubiquity, Volume 5, Issue 39, Dec-8-2004,
When I say “investing in innovation” I mean investing in models, prototypes, and simulations that become platforms for innovating with the invention — the idea itself — and innovating with the actual users and customers for such inventions. It’s not enough to come up with a great idea, you really have to focus on how that idea diffuses throughout the community.
Innovation is not what innovators do but what customers adopt.
For more on this concept see also My Customer, My Co-Innovator
Schrage was interviewed a second time in Ubiquity, Volume 7, Issue 8, in Feb-28-2006
When I wrote “Shared Minds,” my original book on collaboration, I was fascinated by the role that technology can play as a medium for collaboration. I looked at all of these great collaborations and the role that tools and models and prototypes played in managing their creative collaborative interaction. But what I learned after doing that book and being brought in to do advisory work promoting collaboration within large organizations is that, as important as collaborative tools, techniques and technologies are, you have to have an environment where there are incentives to collaborate.
You have to have an internal economy where there are appropriate rewards and incentives for collaborating, and appropriate disincentives for not collaborating.
Note that a revised version of “Shared Minds” was published in paperback as “No More Teams” in 1995. Schrage’s most recent book, Serious Play, while more than a decade old is still worth reading.
Related Blog Posts
February 9th, 2009
In “The Challenges of Measuring Non-Existent Markets” Scott D. Anthony outlines four principal challenges in measuring non-existent markets:
- Data does not yet exist. When a market doesn’t exist, there are no baseline market research reports or time-series data sets to analyze.
- Lack of comparable products. Without existing data, there is a natural tendency to look for good analogies. However, for truly new markets, there typically are no good historical analogies to look for to estimate uptake rate and penetration. Basing estimates off flawed analogies can lead to dramatically incorrect conclusions.
- Existing consumers provide bad data. When a new product or service has disruptive characteristics – that is, it trades-off some dimensions of performance for new benefits around simplicity, convenience and low prices – trying to estimate the market size by talking to existing consumers in markets that appear to be similar to the new market is very dangerous. The existing consumers will naturally discount and denigrate the innovation because they compare it to products and services they are accustomed to consuming.
- New consumers provide unreliable data. Consumers are notoriously bad at visualizing the uses of products or services they are not yet using or do not exist. Because of this, the predictive value of consumer research into emerging markets is low. Furthermore, new markets often develop in surprising ways with surprising consumers, making it difficult to be sure that you are even gathering data from the right sources. Finally, consumers that are currently not consuming a product or service lack reliable reference points, making their reactions to prices somewhat unreliable.
I am aware of two other “customer development” models that are similar to Steve Blank’s “Four Steps to the Epiphany” that are designed to address early market exploration:
- Mark Leslie’s “Sales Learning Curve”
- SyncDev “Sell Design Build”
Note Venchar’s Feb-8-2005 “Value of Customer Development” that points to a 2003 version of Steve Blank’s slides. In particular slides 28 and 29 are key:
Slide 28 defines an Earlyvangelist customer
- Has a Problem
- Know they have a problem
- Has Been Actively Looking for a Solution.
- Has Put Together a Solution out of Piece Parts
- Has, or Can Acquire, Budget
Slide 29 Customer Validation: Four Big Ideas
- The goal is to build a repeatable sales process. Orders are proof the process is working.
- Only earlyvangelists are crazy enough to buy unfinished product.
- No orders? Back to discovery process.
- Early customers help spec version 2.
I am looking for other books, methodologies, tools that address the early market exploration problem. In particular that address Clayton Christensen’s observation in the Innovator’s Dilemma that “markets that don’t exist cannot be analyzed” by offering techniques for exploring emerging markets. In particular any recipes for what Christensen calls a parallel process to development (and what Steve Blank calls customer development):
Only by creating a parallel process for developing and shaping disruptive ideas—one that acknowledges their distinctive features—can companies successfully launch disruption after disruption. Such a process relies more on pattern recognition than on data-driven market analysis. After all, markets that do not exist cannot be analyzed. Even when numbers are available, they are never clear.
from “Six Keys to Building New Markets by Unleashing Disruptive Innovative by Clayton Christensen et. al.
December 2nd, 2008
Attracting new customers is at the heart of every business. Active participation in a community can make you more visible and allows you to demonstrate expertise. Communities offer an informal network and forum for the exchange of ideas, tips and gotchas. These communities include professional groups who are faced with the same set of problems and challenges and are willing to share these problems and solutions with each other. These groups are also a source for direct leads and referrals once you have established your bona fides as a solid member (instead of being viewed as a tourist, or worse, a parasite).
Taking part in user community discussions allows you to build credibility and your reputation as a domain expert. Your participation will also provide you with ideas for new features and even new products, as well as insight for who would be good partners. User group forums will generate leads for your business whether you are a host or an active participant, provided that you are viewed as contributing to the needs of the community and the purposes it formed around. Mark Zuckerberg observed “Communities already exist…think about how one may help a community to do what they want to do.” Here are some suggestions for how you can help to contribute to a community:
- Contribute to Group Forums, Bulletin Boards or Discussion Groups
- Answer Questions
- Contribute to a FAQ
- Post short announcements of general interest
- Plan Something Fun
- Help to involve others in the conversation
- Help newcomers get involved
- Connect folks who can assist each other
- Write Articles for the Newsletter or Website
- Offer a training workshop to address common issues or needs
- Be a Speaker
- Provide Sponsorship (money to fund activities and/or donated prizes for member recognition)
Here is another perspective on the definition of a community from Adam Fields in The First Rule of Community:
“There is really only one rule for community as far as I am concerned, and it is this, in order to call some gathering of people a “community”, it is a requirement that if you are a member of the community, and one day you stop showing up, people will come looking for you to see where you went.”
User groups hold an enormous amount of knowledge and allow for “legitimate peripheral participation” (from Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger’s book “Situated Learning” that documented active listening in a community of practice). These groups allow one to not only join; the groups allow one to engage in a number of influential and informative discussions which are relevant to a prospect’s challenges.
User groups and forums are common places for people to search for answers and experts. When an individual joins these forums (or starts one), they are able to answer questions, ask questions, and contribute useful information. Communities offer opportunities to make your firm visible to prospects, if you are patient and willing to abide by the community standards and informal (“unwritten”) rules. Whether you are looking for customers or peers who will be good partners, it’s important to take a long term view and realize that trust is built over time. If you demonstrate an ongoing commitment to help others in small ways as well as large you will be establishing a reputation as a member of the community in good standing.
“‘I only did it for the publicity’ may turn out to be this generation’s ‘I was just following orders.’” Merlin Mann
To establish a reputation you have to be visible or reasonably well known, but it’s more important to be known for meeting your commitments and giving good advice. Active participation in a community should be with a view not only to making yourself visible but also allowing you a chance to demonstrate appropriate expertise. “Less is more” is a good guideline here, in that it’s better to have folks asking for your opinion than asking for you to stop repeating yourself. You should be making these same assessments of expertise and reliability of potential customers and/or partners, which means far more listening than talking.
If you can’t find acceptable communities to join and participate in, one option is to organize a community around a common set of concerns or needs. This requires supporting some of the logistics and helping to shape appropriate face to face and on-line interactions. Here are a couple of suggestions for starting a new community:
- Be clear on the benefits to the members. Many social networking groups focus on how members bring benefits to a user site, but they are not very clear on what the benefit is to the members.
- Treat this as a conversation with all people. It is important to have a dialogue with both customers and non-customers.
- Remember face-to-face dialogue. This is critical to on-line communities and ecosystems.
- Blend on-line and face-to-face events in complementary ways. A typical face-to-face kickoff will inject a lot of energy and useful context into ongoing on-line interactions.
- Consider a use of on-line content and interaction in a face-to-face event
A few final thoughts about cultivating communities from the 1999 Cluetrain Manifesto that are still relevant (in fact the whole thing is still relevant and definitely worth reading):
- Markets are conversations.
- Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
- Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
- Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments, or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, and uncontrived.
- People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.
- The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.
- Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.
Related posts:
Update Dec 15: I will be on a panel at IEEE-CNSV on “Four Approaches to Marketing” on January 20 addressing this topic. There is no charge for the event. It starts at 7pm at the KeyPoint Credit Union on 2805 Bowers Ave., Santa Clara, CA 95051.
November 20th, 2008
A lot of is written these days about how to conserve cash in a downturn. In particular the need to cut expenses by cutting headcount and unnecessary fill-in-the-blank spending. If you have been bootstrapping and only increasing expenses in response to revenue (versus in anticipation of revenue) then your next question might be “What else can I do?”
Ridge Evers wrote “Guiding Your Business Through the Recession” in March of this year. For me it stands out as the best “top ten” list for surviving this downturn. It starts off with two good suggestions for protecting your current revenue by making sure you stay intimate with your best customers.
1. Focus on your existing customers – Figure out how to keep them. Remember, they’re under the same pressures you are. Make sure you’re the one they want to do business with when things get tough. But don’t make the mistake of becoming their bank by extending too much credit.
2. Make sure you know your best customers, and that they know you care about them – Who, specifically, is your buyer? There’s an old expression in sales: “know your customer’s shoe size.” It’s always a good idea, but especially in an uncertain economy. If you sell to other companies, you need to understand them at the individual level. Communicate frequently, but take the time to make your communication relevant and interesting.
His list is the only one I have read that also addresses the need to remain trustworthy–and therefore creditworthy (hyperlinks added):
5. Conserve creditworthiness – Just like you don’t want to be your customers’ banker, don’t get into the position of being overextended with vendors, especially the ones you really depend on. This is often the opposite of what your instincts are – we all think our key vendors need us, which is true right up until they decide they can’t afford you as a customer. If you have to stretch payments, do it with ancillary vendors, and don’t wait for them to call you – tell them that you’re going to pay them later than you think you can, so you then pay them sooner than you said you would.
6. If things are tight, pay off all the little bills first – You’ll spend as much time and energy answering calls from the little guys as you do from the big ones. And remember the old adage: “If you borrow $1,000 and can’t pay it back, you have a problem. But if you borrow $100,000 and can’t pay it back, the lender has a problem.” Your bigger vendors will work with you – they don’t want to lose you if they can help it. So pay off the little guys, and then communicate with the big ones openly and frequently. And pay something – it shows good faith, and makes it harder to cut you off.
Evers wrote an earlier post in December of 2007 “Should You Raise the Ceiling or Lower the Floor” which used a great visual metaphor for business planning: headroom.
Essentially, a business has “made it” when you can stand up inside the “room” that you’ve created. Obviously, there are two different ways to create more headroom: you can raise the ceiling (revenues), or you can lower the floor (expenses). It’s a physical analogy, but one that I’ve found is really useful in both understanding what’s going on, and in figuring out what to do.
Many owners spend a lot of their time focused on controlling costs (lowering the floor). Some degree of this is healthy, especially when it comes to building a culture within your company that encourages thrift. It’s also the easiest thing to do when you hit a bump, generally, because expenses are something you can control. But it is exceedingly rare that cost control – in any size of business – paves a path to success. The best you can hope for is to buy time.
Most bootstrappers tend to be risk averse: they have all of their eggs in one basket so they have to guard the basket. Given that, attacking an existing expense stream makes a lot of sense, it’s much more tangible than identifying and attempting to exploit an opportunity. Cost management and accounting tools are more mature, especially for small businesses, than marketing and opportunity identification tools. What’s the marketing equivalent to QuickBooks for a small business or a VSB (very small business with less than 15 people, less than four million on revenue)? Please contact us if you know of or are using a good one.
I think for the most part cost saving requires less change in behavior (obviously there are exceptions like the lean model, which requires a fundamental re-think, and some well constructed re-engineering efforts) than going after new customers and so requires less “social cost” inside the business to implement. The negative side effects from a cost savings effort typically take a while to manifest, where the costs savings themselves are normally quickly available.
The place where the most successful business owners focus their energies is on raising the ceiling: growing revenues to the point where the business can stand up comfortably, and keeping it there. And, paradoxically, in many cases the path to a higher ceiling involves increasing expenses – for example, adding a new salesperson, upgrading equipment, or investing in marketing – so as to be able to attract more customers or increase sales to your existing customer base. (More about this in a later posting, but as the old saw goes, “You have to spend money to make money.”)
“What else can I do?” Give us a call.
Our promise is “early customers and early revenue” and our focus is on “raising the ceiling.” We work as virtual members of your team to build on your strengths: your current customers and current products. We help you to sell better what you have. We use low cost methods to explore current and potential markets for new customers. We gather feedback from your current customers, prospects, and lost opportunities, looking for ways to improve your offering to meet their needs more completely.
And we teach founders how to do all these things for themselves over time because we believe that this is the best way to build trust and a long term relationship. We started this firm in 2003, some of our early clients had barely survived the dotcom bust of 2001-2 and were concerned about how to add new customers: we’ve “seen this movie before” and understand how to help you spot the opportunities that are available.
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