The Power of a Simple Thank You Note
Email and text messages may have replaced most postal mail, but a handwritten thank you note conveys a feeling of thoughtfulness, appreciation, and care.
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Sales
The Robin and the Cherries: Sharing Value You Co-Create With Customers
In the same way that we must share cherries with robins if we want them to nest in our neighborhood, we can only capture a part of the value that our software creates for our customers.
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Selling IoT Devices and Networks
Three tips for selling in an early market, with a particular focus on selling IoT devices in 2017: find early adopters, start with a pilot, and identify partners who understand how to foster change.
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Daniel Kahneman’s Reasoned Rule Approach to Reducing Case Management Errors
A reasoned rule approach is a good first step to managing decisions that fall into common patterns or cases. You identify six to eight variables that are distinct and obviously impact the outcome of the case and normalize them into standard scores that can then be added or averaged to create a summary score.
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2017 Workshop Schedule
2017 Workshop Schedule May 4&5, 2017 Registration Closed 1.75-DAY WORKSHOP Domain Hotel – Silicon Valley 1085 E El Camino Real, Sunnyvale, CA 94087 Create and Deliver Surprisingly Compelling Software Demonstrations “Do The Last Thing First” — the recipe for a Great Demo! This is an interactive workshop with Peter Cohan geared especially for you
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Questions to Answer Before You Start Negotiating
Here are some questions to ask yourself before you start negotiating a complex business relationship: for example a software license, SaaS subscription, or a reseller or OEM relationship. Entire books are written on negotiation, I am trying to highlight some questions that can get overlooked.
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Nine Rules from Monetizing Innovation
I am at the Intrapreneurship Conference in Palo Alto today and “Monetizing Innovation” by Madhavan Ramanujam and George Tacke. The book is a fast read that incorporates a some pricing theory into new product introduction, here are nine rules they offer for a successful innovation.
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Newsletter: Pricing to Value
Our September/October 2016 newsletter explores different aspects of the challenge pricing to value: setting the price of your product based on the value that it offers a prospect.
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Fifteen Quotes on Negotiation
Here are fifteen quotes that each communicate a different truth about negotiation. I have added some commentary to suggest how to apply them.
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Newsletter: Early Sales
Our May/June 2016 newsletter highlights early sales for entrepreneurs, who are motivated not by a quota but the need to meet payroll or otherwise keep their startup solvent.
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Texas Hold’Em as a Model for Technology Startups
Texas Hold’Em offers some useful models for technology startups: pick the right table (competitors) and understand how your cards best combine with common cards (the status quo and adjacent possible)
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If You Need Smarter Prospects, You Need a Better Message
I have learned the hard way whenever I wish for smarter prospects it means I need to improve my presentation, demo, or proposal: whatever it is that I have offered them that they didn’t understand, or believe, or decide to act on.
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Q: How Can I Maximize ROI and Minimize Risk?
You can only capture a share of the value that you create if you want to create a sustainable business. While you need to assess the likely return on investment from your efforts and your probability of success, you also need to look at any deal from the other side of the table. It’s as
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Q: How Do We Get A Business Prospect To Talk To Us?
Each interaction with a business prospect or a customer has to promise an exchange of value: their time or money for at least the strong possibility of benefit. Many of the startup fantasy camp customer development training models neglect this and teach beginning entrepreneurs to rely on the kindness of strangers. This may work in
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When You Are No Longer The Smartest Person In The Room
You may have been the smartest person in the room for a long time, but getting into a room with a customer changes that because a key knowledge domain of interest is the customer’s situation and needs. Here are some suggestions for how to keep learning instead of acting like the smartest person in the
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Q: How To Critique a Competitor?
A recent question from an office hours session on how to handle a prospect asking you to critique a competitor when both of you have new offerings in a new application area.
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The Nitty Gritty of Setting Up Customer Discovery Meetings
David Telleen-Lawton has more than two decades of customer development. This blog post on the nitty gritty of setting up customer discovery meetings is adapted from his presentation at the 2015 Lean Startup Conference.
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How To Test Your Leap To A Solution
In your early customer discovery conversations to assess demand for a new offering a wide range of customer needs and symptoms can trigger a leap to a solution, which just happens to be yours. Guard against this by probing to understand the root problem–have at least three questions that allow you to dig out the
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Only Ask Customers For Referrals
Only ask your customers for referrals, don’t jump the gun and ask prospects to recommend you, especially if they have not even had a chance to use your product.
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Newsletter: Referrals / Thanksgiving
Our November 2015 newsletter highlights building referrals, which we define as an introduction inspired by your ability to help the prospect with a problem or need.
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