Startups selling larger sized deals don’t generally concern themselves very much with managing a pipeline of leads at the beginning. Most of the BtoB focused companies I know have started with 1 or 2 sales folks managing their own pipeline of leads which have come from them mining their own list of contacts along with [...]
I got a thoughtful comment on my post called “3 signs your market segmentation might suck” from Rob saying: I worked in a company that had some good software and some smart folks that solved hard problems. They were small, about $5M in revenue and they were in Financial Services, Health Care, Government, Automotive, Transportation, [...]
In my last post I said I was going to talk next about how to get started with a decent segmentation. In my practical experience the whole reason you want to have a few target segments is so you can build company expertise around a particular business problem in a particular market. This understanding helps [...]
I think most start-up execs don’t really believe in segmentation. Sure, if I ask for their segmentation they dutifully blow the dust off a fairly nice looking slide that shows what markets they are targeting. Then I look at the customer list and the two things don’t line up whatsoever. The execs know they’re supposed [...]
We’re in the middle of a recession and suddenly all of the smaller companies I’m talking to are concerned about whether or not they should be dropping their prices. The thinking is that in times of tighter budgets, the lowest cost provider has a market advantage. Is that really true? And if it is, are [...]
Traditionally really small software companies have Development, Marketing, Sales and that’s about it (Ok I am generalizing here – there might be a lawyer, a finance person or two, possibly an IT person, work with me on this one, ok?). Once the organization has landed a customer or two, and have started thinking beyond release [...]
We all know references are critical to closing deals but most companies don’t get around to actively managing them until the 2 referenceable customers they do have are all yelling “Am I your only crummy reference?! Pick on someone else!!” I launched a customer reference program from the ground up once and it was PAINFUL! [...]
Seth Godin wrote a post a couple of days back called “Your Brand is Not Your Logo”, where he called the recent re-branding efforts of a couple of big consumer brands “Cluelessness on the half shell”. I couldn’t agree with that more. I wrote a post a while back on product naming and this one [...]
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Should Only Startups with Products Get Funded?
Is a startup with a defined product for a specific market really more valuable than a startup without those things? It depends on what you know about your market.
6 Skills That Will get you a Startup Marketing Job
The skills startups are looking for in a marketing hire are remarkably consistent. These are the skills I hear about the most and how you might easily get them.
A/B Testing: Knowing What Works Doesn’t Tell you Why
The results of an experiment where a hand-drawn doodle outperforms a professionally designed ad. tell us what worked but not necessarily why.
Industry Analysts: Can You Buy Coverage?
Industry analyst firms like Forrester and Gartner Group won’t write about you just because you pay them. You should be happy they don’t.