skmurphy

Appreciative Inquiry Mindset Essential to Customer Discovery

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a mindset that is essential in customer discovery. It encourages you to look for what’s working in an potential customer’s organization and “work with the grain of the wood.” It enables you to build on demonstrated strengths and accomplishments in framing your solution to a critical business problem.

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Customer Development Conversations With Busy Prospects

Question from an entrepreneur in the midst of customer discovery for a new product. Q: We are preparing to launch our first product in a few months. Next week there is a conference sponsored by a professional society that represents one of our potential target markets.  We have already done about a dozen customer discovery

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Selling to a Business Requires Conversations that Build Trust

I am always interested in having a conversation with a prospect. If you are hoping to infer needs from seeing them press a menu button with an icon or one or two words on it I think that’s a poor substitute for a conversation. I know that people cannot always predict what they need or

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Learning From Netflix’s 2011 Pricing Strategy Mistakes

“Never mistake a clear view for a short distance.” Paul Saffo “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” Roy Amara Netflix increased prices by 60% for streaming media and DVD combinations and threatened to split their website into two halves–DVD and

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Real Clear Technology Aggregates Mainstream Media on Technology

I like Hacker News for early information and insights on technology.  But I find the newly launched Real Clear Technology site useful to understand mainstream perception of the impact of technology innovation. It’s a branch off the Real Clear Politics site, my hope is that they build it out to match the same feature set.

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The Risk of General Purpose Toolkits as a First Product

I will sometimes encounter an entrepreneur or team who is developing “a general purpose toolkit for X.” This may be at a Bootstrapper Breakfast or other networking event. They have often developed a core of a promising technology and see applications for it everywhere. Here is what I normally suggest: Write up a few examples

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Outstanding Panel for Wed-Sep-14 Book Club on “Great Demo”

We have an outstanding panel lined up for next Wednesday’s Business Impact Book Club: Matt Cameron,  CEO, WhoTo.com Jon Cline,  Principal, Cirrus Path Brian K. Seitz, Managing Director, Intellectual Arbitrage Group We will discuss lessons learned applying Peter Cohan‘s methodology from his “Great Demo” book. If you are interested in improving your sales presentation you

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