Sometimes complex customer problems require complex solutions. We can get stuck in considering how do we address it instead of thinking of the customer first. Addressing the complex problems of your customer requires finding a way to be part of the bigger ecosystem that the customer’s complex issue sits in.
Value Proposition
Does your B2B Customer Persona include their job KPIs
Now let’s consider instead that your B2B customer decision maker is an area Sales Manager. This Sales Manager measured on Market Share and Revenue as well, but they may be more directly measured on the length of the sales cycle and their team’s lead to conversion rate. For this customer, your messaging could focus more on the impact of closing deals anytime anywhere; enabling their mobile sales teams to close deals faster, as well as cutting down on the number of buyers who change their mind in the previous extended time before the invoice was sent.
Why you should treat Partners and Employees as Customers
It’s not reasonable to expect people to contribute to our business without return. We need to consider what’s in it for them. I believe that we need to look at partners and employees as customers. They pay us with their time, their outputs, the doors they open and their loyalty.
Can you quantify the value you provide customers?
how do we know if our Customers are realizing these benefits? Do our Customers know they are achieving these benefits? And more importantly – do our Customers agree that these are the key benefits they want from our offering? To answer these questions we need to make the Value Proposition more than just a marketing statement. We need to make it a living breathing part of the business.
Why Startups should worry about Brand second
Startups primary focus is customer acquisition. This happens by refining the customer persona, defining and branding positioning statement and responding to the customer buying cycle. You lean this by engaging with customers. Working on brand comes second.
Why you might want to have a Pitch Deck ready even if you are not looking for funding
For the entrepreneur, life is often “just-in-time”. With this in mind, the typical Founder is likely to delay putting together a pitch deck until if or when they decide to go for external funding. I would like to present a contrarian view as to why creating a business pitch is actually one of the things they should be doing, even if they aren’t looking for funding today.
What market sector is your company in? How you answer the question speaks volumes
I’ve been doing customer discovery interviews of Founders that start off with some demographic questions to place some context around the discovery questions that are the meat of the interview. It’s been interesting to hear the answer the Founder gives. Because it’s usually phrased in one of two ways: self-reflective in language that talks about the function of the company; or in customer-centric language that describes the market that the customer sits in.
When should you “unbundle” a product or service?
How do you identify when a piece of a product or an individual service may be something that can actually stand on its own, and may actually perform better if it was unbundled from the whole?