Posts filed under 'tshafer'
July 27th, 2008
Getting More Customers (a Do-It-Yourself marketing and self-promotion workshop) leads SKMurphy’s fall workshop schedule. SKMurphy workshop combine lecture, written exercises, and interaction with a roomful of entrepreneurs. We guide you through your one-page plan and provide time dedicated to your business. You leave with a one-page action plan that’s based on sound principles, reflection, and review and feedback both from us and peers..
- Thursday August 21, 2008 8:15-1:00pm Getting More Customers Sunnyvale CA
- Saturday Sept 13, 2008 8:15-1:00pm Great Demo San Jose CA
- Wednesday Sept 24, 2008 11:30-1:30pm Financial Modeling for Start-Ups Sunnyvale CA
- Tuesday October 14, 2008 8:15-1:00pm Engineering Your Sales Process Redwood Shores CA
- Dec 2008 Idea to Revenue (TBA)
This workshop has consistently enjoyed very positive feedback and the last couple have sold out, so register early.
July 17th, 2008
Consulting is a referral business. Four things you can do today to build referrals:
- Make a list of at least 30 people you have had shared success with. Go back at least 15 years or college/university. Taking the time to go back to your first job is worth it.
- Contact those people and tell them
- What you have been up to
- Here’s what I am looking for, please refer people to if they are looking for my services
- Please let me know what you have been up to and call if there is anything I can do to help.
- Keep their needs in mind and pro-actively notify them if you run across articles, people, events, or opportunities that are relevant or likely to be useful.
- Write 2 testimonials for people in the shared success category in LinkedIn
July 16th, 2008
What is an advisory board?
An advisory board is a formal or informal group of advisors who give advise, contacts, and feedback. Unlike the board of directors they do not have a fiduciary responsibility but are critical for start-ups. Also see Forming an advisory board.
How can they help me?
There are three broad ways that an advisory board can help you. The first is domain or technology knowledge. Secondly, industry knowledge advisors will understand the real ins and outs of how your market works and what the market needs are, they may also be able to open doors. Domain or technology folks maybe able to open door to potential partners and suppliers, but market knowledge folks maybe able to bring in the prospects or at least have you talk to people that prevent strategic misfires as you go into the market. And thirdly, if neither of the other two groups have been in a start-up before, it’s good to have at least one person either on your team or as an advisor who has rapid growth. So, if you are fortunate and you start to really takeoff, you have some somebody that helps you make decisions in a timely way and understands what to look out for and how to scale the company.
What do I give them?
Normally advisors which add credibility to your firm in a variety of ways, will trade expertise or services for equity.You typically are going to give them founders’ equity stock which is coming out of your pocket. It is frankly a negotiation, how much time they give you or how much equity they get, and that brings anywhere from 0.1% or 1%, in some very rare cases perhaps 2%, that’s the negotiation. Usually there is some kind of vesting schedule maybe on a 2-year or 3-year schedule with a 3 month or 6 month cliff. Because you want to make sure that things are working out, you don’t have a values’ conflict or getting value, you normally have a 3 or 6 month cliff. If things do not work out, then they walk away, they don’t get anything. During those early months
How do I use them?
You want to actually bring them together as appropriate to do at least a quarterly meeting, might be a phone call, might be a nice dinner. This time you can brief them on your business, dry run your demo, and get feedback on your plans. you would like to be to able get some introductions. They are a great source for contacts for employees, partners, prospects, or investment partners.
What do I ask of them?
- You are looking typically for 2 hours a month, 4 hours a quarter. Schedule either monthly, or twice a quarter, once a quarter formal meeting where you present a briefing for them. These become a proxy for your real board meetings until you have a real board of directors, this is a board of advisors.
- You want to be able to call them when urgent things come up. They are busy people, so you only want call for urgent things, but when urgent things come up, you want to be able to reach out to them.
- You want to negotiate use their name. You would like to announce in a press release that they have joined you, would like to be able to use their name on your website, you would like to be able to have folks call them to get their opinion of you, it might be investors or it might be a major prospect you are talking to.
Normally about two-thirds of that value is the advice they give you and one-third is the doors they open and the value that their reputation sheds on your company. VentureHacks has three relevant posts that are more focused on VC related issues than bootstrapping but still worth reviewing:
April 29th, 2008
For Silicon Valley our favorite location to meet clients is American Executive Center. Depending on the requirements for the meeting we use a number of places outlined at meeting locations.
Full Calendar is another great source for meeting venues. It’s a great list and far more encompassing than ours. Enter “venues” in the search form.
April 2nd, 2008
Do you think selling as dishonest and manipulative? Some of the teams we encounter are looking for the most accomplished liar they can find to jumpstart their sales process. Perhaps you feel that way?
This post “You are a Doctor, not a Salesperson” from eLAMPROS might change your mind. Some key points:
“Studying the ’sales process’ the doctor uses to sell a cure, you will notice …
- A doctor is important enough for you to go to them.
- Generally a long wait is worth your time to get to see the doctor.
- The more important the problem you have, the more important the doctor becomes. And, by the way, you don’t try to go the least expensive route.
- Doctors don’t sell you – they diagnose you using data points you provide. And you believe them and act on it.
- Doctors can tell you about a problem you don’t even know you have.
- The diagnosis and recommendations you get from doctors always trump those you get from a friend or family member … or even a website.
- The ’sales cycle’ is very short.
- Doctors are always going straight to the decision maker for the decision.
- Every time you have a problem you go back for another consultation.
We tell our team, “You are not a salesperson, you are a DOCTOR”. When we find ourselves working with prospects to DIAGNOSE their problems we seem to end up in a doctor-like situation. Our prospects buy more quickly, they trust our recommendations, the decision maker is involved early and often, and they appreciate our advice and come back for it often.”
For the record we believe that integrity is essential to the startup sales process, many times you are promising future performance and the team needs to be mindful of the consequences not only to the customer and but to their reputation. We follow Steve Blank’s “Four Steps to the Epiphany” customer development model, which means that we believe the founders must sell. Why? Sometimes it’s the presentation and sometimes it’s the product. In the early market it’s too easy to blame the messenger if you weren’t part of the conversation with the customer and don’t want to hear that your product needs to be changed.
We have a roundtable next Tuesday that will look at sales issues for SaaS firms. In particular how does SaaS change sales management, sales compensation, and selling strategies. It’s over a lunch from 11:30 to 1pm at Plug and Play, 440 N Wolfe Rd Sunnyvale, California 94084. You can Register here.
March 10th, 2008
If you missed us at SDWest last week, here are pointers to firms and organizations we had in the Startup Resource Center.
March 2nd, 2008
SKMurphy will host Peter Cohan’s Great Demo workshop on Saturday March 8 in San Jose.
“SKMurphy’s partnership with the Second Derivative has allowed entrepreneurs at smaller firms access to the same world class sales training normally only available to Fortune 1000 companies. In the class my team developed a presentation that allowed us to explain our offering much more clearly to our prospective customers.” said Miles Kehoe, President at New Idea Engineering. “We have also reshaped how we help our clients present results to their end users. The temptation so often is to start at the beginning of the story and tell them here’s what we did first … then we did this … and really the only thing the they care about is the results, the improvements they will see.”
Workshop registration information is at http://www.skmurphy.com/services/workshops/cohans-great-demos/
World Class Sales Training for Entrepreneurs
“We are offering this workshop as a service to the startup community. We have been fortunate that Peter has set aside time to give the same material that he provides software firms like Ariba, BMC Software, Business Objects, and Macrovision.” said Sean Murphy, CEO of SKMurphy. “For entrepreneurs it’s critical to demonstrate clear and concise benefits. Peter takes you through a number of exercises designed to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and understand how to identify and address their critical business issues more effectively than anyone I have seen.”
Peter Cohan, author of the book Great Demo!, coined the phrase “Do The Last Thing First” as a recipe for creating and delivering surprisingly compelling software demonstrations. Peter’s methodology enables attendees to create and deliver powerful demonstrations for the marketing, sales, and deployment of software and related products. Whether it’s face to face, over the web, as a screencast, or as a self-running demo, the ability to present the key benefits of your software product is essential to generating prospect interest and ultimately revenue.
About Second Derivative (http://www.secondderivative.com)
The Second Derivative helps software organization achieve their sales and marketing objectives by dramatically improving the success rates of their demos. The Second Derivative offers workshops, coaching and consulting with a focus on the needs of organizations developing and selling business-to-business software.
About New Idea Engineering (http://www.ideaeng.com)
New Idea Engineering helps Fortune 1000 companies successfully implement enterprise search. We provide vendor-neutral technical consulting, training, and integration to companies implementing search technologies.
February 22nd, 2008
Here are 10 common reasons to issue a press release.
- Announce a strategic partnership or alliance
- Issuing a statement on a hot issue
- New client acquisition
- Holding a seminar or workshop
- Availability of white paper or article
- Company revenue, sales, or profit
- Announce new member of board of directors or board of advisors
- invitation for a special offer
- Participation in local event or tradeshow
- Winning an award
Normally, I only do a top 3 list, but I thought there were a number of good reasons to issue a press release.
January 28th, 2008
SKMurphy Inc., the Silicon Valley leader in customer development for serious bootstrapping entrepreneurs, will host Peter Cohan’s Great Demo workshop on Saturday March 8. Cohan coached the latest winner of the DEMO Conference in Fall 2007: Phreesia improves the patient experience in medical office waiting rooms by automating patient check-in, generating comprehensive documentation, and allows physicians to track past visits, medications, and information recorded from other doctors offices.
“We are offering this workshop as a service to the startup community. Learning to get your point across within the first ten minutes so that your prospective customer is engaged and asking questions is critical for all startup entrepreneurs” said Sean Murphy, CEO of SKMurphy. “When I first heard Peter speak, it was an enormously enlightening and energizing experience. I have been scripting and giving demos (and presentations) for more than 20 years and here was an approach that was much better than anything I had seen.”
Phreesia’s CEO, Chaim Indig, believes “the workshop is definitely worth the money!” While sitting in Peter Cohan’s workshop, Chaim thought “this was obvious, but no one was presenting like this.” After the workshop Chaim bought enough copies of Peter’s book for everyone in the company. “Peter Cohan’s Great Demo method really works. It helped us win DEMOgod, and it has allowed us to explain our offering much more clearly to prospects.”
“Phreesia has an outstanding product, and the on-stage demonstration was well rehearsed and very crisp.” said Chris Shipley, co-founder of the Guidewire Group and Executive Producer of the DEMO Conference. “A quality demo has an impact on the audience and communicates the product’s value, and does so in a succinct, limited timeframe. Chaim Indig gave a clear and concise value proposition for the doctor, patient and company. He made an immediate connection with the audience.”
Peter Cohan, author of the book Great Demo!, coined the phrase “Do The Last Thing First” a recipe for creating and delivering surprisingly compelling software demonstrations. Peter’s methodology outlines a framework to create and deliver improved demonstrations and presentations to increase success in the marketing, sales, and deployment of software and related products. Whether it’s face to face, over the web, as a screencast, or as a self-running demo, the ability to present the key benefits of your software product is essential to generating prospect interest and ultimately revenue. Peter Cohan of The Second Derivative gives us the recipe for a Great Demo!
Workshop registration information is at http://www.skmurphy.com/services/workshops/
About SKMurphy, Inc. (http://www.skmurphy.com/)
At SKMurphy, Inc. we offer business development services for software entrepreneurs. We provide strategic advice on customer development, company development, product planning, and new product introduction. We develop executable plans with measurable results to grow your business. Our focus is on early customers and early revenue for software startups.
About Second Derivative (http://www.secondderivative.com)
The Second Derivative helps software organization achieve their sales and marketing objectives by dramatically improving the success rates of their demos. The Great Demo! method enables organizations to create and deliver surprisingly effective software demonstrations. The Second Derivative offers workshops, coaching and consulting with a focus on the needs of organizations developing and selling business-to-business software.
About Phreesia (http://www.phreesia.com)
The idea is simple but effective: instead of reading a magazine while waiting, patients are handed a Phreesia WebPad where they can provide their demographics, complaints, and other basic registration information. The system is free for doctors and patients to electronically store and enter health data without affecting the normal office work flow. Additionally, the portal allows patients to learn about their medical problems and participate in ongoing question & answer sessions which provide them with other relevant information.
January 23rd, 2008
Join us at SDWest 2008 March 3-7, the conference offers with both business and technology tracks and has an interesting mix of sessions for software entrepreneurs. In addition to the technology oriented sessions you would expect, the conference has added a “Business of Software” track that should prove valuable to folks in–or planning to be in–a software startup. As a part of the business track, Steve Blank is speaking on Starting and Running an Entrepreneurial Company: Customer Development and he is always worth listening to.
Come visit us at Booth #318 and see our Startup Resource Center.
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