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Jas P

10 Studies That Reveal What Customers WANT You To Know About Them - 0 views

blog.kissmetrics.com/what-customers-want

Customer development customer service conversion

shared by Jas P on 14 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • 1. Customers Care More about Service Quality and Attitude than about Service Speed
  • A recent Gallup study reveals that when it comes to memorable service people tell their friends about, it’s more important that the service provided feels “thorough” and friendly, rather than quick. This was especially true for service in premium or prestigious markets, such as customer support at a bank.
  • Not only that, in a Customer Experience Report by RightNow, researchers found that the #1 reason customers would abandon a brand was due to poor quality and rude customer service, which were cited 18% more often than “slow or untimely service.”
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  • 2. Customers Know What They (and Other Customers) Want; They’re also Willing to Help
  • In a study of 1,193 commercially successful innovations across nine industries, 737 (60%) came from customers (i.e., customers can have very innovative ideas). User-created innovations have been successfully utilized to turn around “innovative slump periods.” While #1 is certainly a shocking revelation, there is a unique case study for #2 that really paints a believable picture for just how valuable customer input is.
  • 3. Customers like Loyalty Programs… as Long as You Make Them Seem Easy
  • In their research on the Endowed Progress Effect, Nunes and Dreze tested two versions of a car-wash loyalty program, which consisted of a card that got stamped after every wash. The first card needed 8 stamps to get a free wash. The second card needed 10 stamps to get a free wash, but 2 stamps were automatically added when the customer joined. That means both cards took 8 stamps total to get a free wash; they were just framed differently. Which one do you think performed better? Their findings: Despite the similar process, the second card performed almost twice as well as the first card, having 34 percent of participants complete it versus 19 percent for the other card. Why is this important? It shows that customers are more likely to stick with loyalty programs if the task at hand is framed as already being started.
  • 4. Creating Goodwill with Customers Doesn’t Take a Lot of Money
  • An employee on the phone with a customer during a marathon troubleshooting session heard the customer tell someone in the background that they were getting hungry. As she tells it, “So I put them on hold, and I ordered them a pizza. About 30 minutes later, we were still on the phone, and there was a knock on their door. I told them to go answer it because it was pizza! They were so excited.”
  • What’s actually happening: While the cost of the gifts/actions is quite small, the human mind simply cannot refuse the psychological construct of reciprocity. Reciprocity can be summed up as our natural inclination to feel grateful for favors and our desire to “pay them back,” no matter how small they are (covered quite well by Cialdini in his famous book Influence). The other thing that you must understand about reciprocity is that research has shown us that the intentions of the “giver” can affect the perceived value of the gift. This is why “Frugal WOWs” work so well: Customers perceive the service as a genuine act of kindness rather than as you trying to buy their affection with costly gifts. So remember, it doesn’t take huge expenses to win customers over!
  • 5. Customers Absolutely Adore Personalization; They Will Gladly Pay More for It
  • Would you believe that waiters were able to increase their tips by 23% over a control group by utilizing something as inexpensive as mints? It’s true, and this research is not only important in helping you understand how to create repeat customers, but also how to keep your customers incredibly satisfied and supportive of your business offering.
  • The results were surprising to say the least: The first group studied had waiters giving mints along with the check, making no mention of the mints themselves. This increased tips by around 3% against the control group. The second group had waiters bring out two mints by hand (separate from the check), and they mentioned them to the table (i.e., “Would anyone like some mints before they leave?”). This saw tips increase by about 14% against the control group. The last group had waiters bring out the check first along with a few mints. A short time afterward, the waiters came back with another set of mints and let customers know they had brought out more mints, in case they wanted another. That last group is where waiters saw a 21% increase in tips… yet they still were bringing out only two mints. The researchers found that it was the perceived personalization of bringing out the second set of mints and mentioning it to customers (“Hey, I thought I might see if all of you are satisfied or if someone could use an extra mint.”) that made the difference.
  • Point being: It wasn’t really the mints; it was the personalized experience that they created. It made it perfectly clear to customers that the waiter was thinking of them. Be sure to incorporate this into your own offering: How can you follow up with customers in a personalized manner with free support, training, or reward for trying out your product or service?
  • Research lead by Melanie Green and Timothy Brock reveals that trying to persuade people by telling them stories works extremely well. The reason that stories (when told well) are so appealing to customers is that you can transport them inside the story and get your point across without directly selling.
  • Once inside the story, we are less likely to notice things which don’t match up with our everyday experience. For example, an inspirational Hollywood movie with a “can-do” spirit might convince us that we can tackle any problem, despite what we know about how the real world works. Also, when concentrating on a story, people are less aware that they are subject to a persuasion attempt: The message gets in under the radar. Our brains have a tendency to be mostly concerned with enjoying the story and absorbing the message.
  • For instance, over at Help Scout, I conducted an interview with Leo Wildrich of the BufferApp that discussed how a small team like Buffer’s could possibly handle email support with tens of thousands of customers. The tale of a small team dealing with mountains of support emails was definitely one that resonated with a lot of small business owners, and the post was quite popular and performed well, all without the “hard-sell.”
  • Everyone loves hearing their own name! The implications of this have been seen across a variety of situations in dealing with customers: People tend to like you more if you use their name a few times during conversations. (But there is a limit; saying their name too much becomes unnatural and insincere.) People open emails with more consistency if their name is included. (That’s a big reason to ask for a name if you want increased conversions via email.) People often assume you are more competent if you know their name; it’s a big part of their identity, and if you recall it and use it, you are instantly viewed in a better light in their eyes. Utilizing customer names when interacting with them directly is an important part of making people feel like individuals rather than a “support ticket.” It’s difficult to scale, but if you care about your customers, it’s an essential part of winning them over. There’s quite a difference between receiving an automated email from “DO-NOT-REPLY” versus receiving one from “Scott” saying, “Hey Greg, thank you for your purchase! :)”
  • 9. Selling “Time” over Savings Can put Your Customers in a Better Buying Mood Have you ever wondered why commercials for “cheap beer” never, ever focus on the money that you can save by buying them? Instead, they create ads and slogans that focus on having a great time (i.e., “It’s Miller Time!”) This isn’t an accident. As it turns out, new research from Stanford reveals that selling “time” over money can make customers more receptive to buying. From Aaker’s research: “Ultimately, time is a more scarce resource—once it’s gone, it’s gone—and therefore more meaningful to us,” says Mogilner. “How we spend our time says so much more about who we are than how we spend our money.” Getting people to think about a period of time they enjoyed (associated with a product) can be much more effective than reminding them that they could be saving money.
  • 10. Bringing up Savings Makes Customers Feel Self-Centered and Greedy
  • Psychologist Kathleen Vohs has done numerous studies on priming, specifically in terms of how it affects our perception of money. She found through her research that just thinking about money makes us more self-serving and less willing to help others: Two sets of subjects were “primed” with either cues related to money (money related images, essays about making money) or cues that were unrelated to money. Later, subjects were asked to solve a difficult “brain-buster” and to help others do the same (those others being people “in” on the study).
  • Getting people to think about money and having them enter this “selfish” state can be beneficial or disastrous in advertising benefits to customers. If you’re selling an item associated with luxury or prosperity, this mindset may be a good thing (advertising your mutual fund, financial/retirement services, etc.).
  • Roger Dooley, author of Brainfluence, had this to say: [Marketers] who should be particularly cautious about money cues are those who want to appeal to the viewer’s feelings about others. Filling viewers with feelings of warmth and a desire to please someone else… and then reminding them about money, could be self-defeating.
  • Vohs agrees, citing research that shows how money often creates conflict and stress when paired with family issues, due to conflicting interests (Burroughs and Rindfleisch, 2002). The lesson: Be wary of reminding your customers about money if your product isn’t related to serving self-interests.
Jas P

[Companies with 8 figures of revenue] are worth many multiples of 8 figures to a... | H... - 0 views

news.ycombinator.com/item

pricing funding startup financial

shared by Jas P on 18 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Let's say that you've built up, from essentially nothing, enough of a presence in your industry that you're selling $10 million a year of SaaS. That's only 10k accounts at a blended average of $100 a month -- far less if, like many SaaS companies, you make a significant whack of your money on custom enterprise deals that are not on the pricing page.
  • Now consider this company from the perspective of a Fortune 500 like, say, Intuit:1) They have software which exists.2) Their software creates clear value for customers. They have 10,000 people signing their praises and case studies up the wazoo. We know people will pay $100 a month for it -- we have copious, audited financial statements that prove that.
  • 3) Oh yeah, we're a Fortune 500 company. Launching a new product costs us $250 million and we could fail to produce something that both achieves technical success and produces any value for anyone anywhere. Assuming we do, selling to our built-in base of hundreds of thousands of customers is what we do best.Intuit can totally justify spending, say, $300 million to buy $20 million a year of revenue and the opportunity to 20x that by selling it to everyone who has ever heard of Quickbooks. Or mid 8 figures for something which has, say, a million a year in revenue.
Jas P

Distribution Hacks - 0 views

distributionhacks.com

startup startup idea validation growth hacking

shared by Jas P on 13 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • “Hi Elle, what’s the angle?”
  • “Arbitrage on parsing shipping data,” I reply. “Well, everyone has an angle.”
  • My Dad explained that hedge funds are truly a dime-a-dozen in the finance world, not dissimilar from angel investors.
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  • Then he said the thing that was THE THING: You can do a hedge fund anytime, why do it now? Well thanks Dad, for the vote of confidence (more like “holy fuck you think I could raise hundreds of millions of dollars in this economy!?”), but what do I do with that?
  • He continued to explain that creating a hedge fund, or any kind of fund, was something i should be thinking about in my 40s or 50s when I wanted a more traditional role in finance with a lower risk/reward profile.
  • My family is upper middle class, but as service providers to the very wealthy I’ve learned some valuable things about money, at a much younger age than I otherwise would.
  • It has changed how I approach people with money, for better or for worse. I expect this will have an interesting impact on my ability to raise funding for my company (and I’m not saying all positive here):
  • “Yes but what do we sell?”
  • “We sell trust, honey,” he smiles. “We’re honest people just like the steel workers, union laborers, and employees these companies serve. We help them keep their promises.”
  • A series of deaths in my family in the past couple years have made me more aware of mortality than I ever was before. My Dad pointed out, as we discussed the hedge fund business, that it was something I could do without actually leaving a chair. Move to New York, get a Blackberry, iPhone and 3-line desk phone and I could operate from anywhere.
  • But I would never be able to recapture, at 50, the energy of being 25. My Dad had me when he was 28. To him, I am so early in my life (I’m 27 now… this post reflects on a convo 2 years ago).
  • Staring down Demo Day, I hold this conversation in my mind. Have some balls, Elle. I’m pretty sure that’s what he was trying to say.
Jas P

Ramit Sethi and Patrick McKenzie on Getting Your First Consulting Client | Kalzumeus So... - 0 views

www.kalzumeus.com/...g-your-first-consulting-client

consulting Customer development

shared by Jas P on 14 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Ramit:  I want to emphasize a couple of things you mentioned. One, if you’re charging 5, 10, 20 bucks an hour, it’s very, very difficult to go from that to charging 200, 300 an hour or 10,000 a week.  It’s very difficult to make that transition. If you do it when you come in, that can happen. But going from one level to another is extremely difficult.
  • Thumbnail sketch: You can get from $20 to $100 by getting serious as a professional, and you get from $100 to $200 by getting really good as a professional (or working in a high-demand speciality), and then somewhere between say $150 and a weekly rate in the tens of thousands you probably repositioned your offering such that it is no longer directly comparable to what you were doing before.
  • Can you sell Rails at $50k a week?  I'm going to go with "almost certainly yes."  I think there are probably people who do that, and if you listened to them pitch clients, they would speak a language that holds very little in common with what you hear from a $100 an hour Rails developer.  Want to speak that language?  Keep reading for some thoughts.  (It will also help to get pretty darn good at Rails... though I think most people in my audience probably overestimate how skilled you have to be to move up that ladder.)]
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  • Ramit: The other thing you mentioned is how many people go in saying, “I’ll just do this first, and I need to make my bones.” And you know what? There is a time and a place to do free work. I do believe in free work occasionally. But I always tell people if you’re going to do free work, make sure you are clear about your messaging.
  • Now, I’m generally not a fan of free work, but I can be strategically. This is what I would say to the client. I would say look, my normal consulting rate is $85 an hour, or whatever format of pricing you’re using.
  • However, I really like what you’re doing, and frankly, I want to build up my portfolio. I would be willing to do this for three weeks for free if, in exchange, you agree that if I do an extraordinary job, then we can discuss working at my normal rate. Well, who’s going to say no to that? If you do an extraordinary job, everyone’s going to want to pay you.
  • But in this case, yes, you are working for free. But you are explaining why. That is so important. It separates you from, frankly, the people who are new. They’re new, and you can tell that they’re asking to be taken advantage, because they’re like OK, I’ll work for free. It’ll be fine. Somehow, I’ll go from free to $500 an hour. Doesn’t work. Explain your messaging. Explain your positioning, and people will respect you way more for it.
  • You will then aggressively leverage this portfolio when attempting to get work at your current billing rates.  I have projects which I did at $X per week which I will use to justify new $5X per week projects at new clients.  If clients ever picked up on the discrepancy – which would require me being stupid like mentioning that somewhere publicly… wait… d’oh – I would say something like “My previous client took a chance on me earlier in my career, when I didn’t have a track record of delivering results to people just like them. 
  • Ramit:  That’s right. I want to talk about one of the secret sauces of my business, and it’s something that actually nobody really cares about. People think they care about it, but they don’t care about it. It is the research that I do going into building a product or getting a client. And I know you’ve done this as well. It’s funny. The other day, I was asking people, “Hey, if I speak at South by Southwest, what would be a good talk?” Somebody wrote back on Twitter saying, “You should talk about your research methodology.” I said that would be great… for the three people who would attend.
  • Research is what allows me to charge 100 times what my competition charges… but nobody cares. Nobody wants to see [the hard work which goes into] how the sausage is made.  They just want to see the shiny tactic – the A/B test where you tested the color of this button.
  • I have a course called Earn 1K, and it’s about how to take your skills and turn them into freelancing income by getting multiple clients and earning 1K. Many of my successful students earn 5K or 10K in a month on the side. So, very relevant to the people listening here. When I started off doing this research, I actually didn’t even think of doing an “earn money” product
  • You can negotiate your salary. You can get passive income, which for most people, never works. You can get freelance income. You can blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.  [Patrick notes: Ramit would probably round out this list with 1) buy real estate and rent it to people, 2) invest in the public capital markets, and 3) start an honest-to-goodness business.]
  • Now, you can get good survey data with as few as 20 responses.  For all the engineers listening, listen closely: Statistical significance is irrelevant when you’re doing customer research. I don’t give a damn about P values and anything like that. It’s almost all qualitative.
  • Now, you don’t have to do 50,000.  Honestly, 100 gets you farther than most people do. [Patrick notes: I think talking to ten individual people who could actually buy your product prior to writing a line of code puts you ahead of the curve, judging from my inbox.  You’ll learn a million times more from 10 people than you’ll learn from your IDE when coding a product built for nobody.]
  • No SEO wakes up in the morning and thinks, “Damn, I have a WordPress problem.” They wake up in the morning and say, “Damn, I have a business problem.”
  • I pay them pretty well. I have passed on hiring engineers who may be more technically proficient, but they didn’t understand what I wanted. Honestly, guys, as a business owner, do you think I care if you’re using this technology or that? I just don’t give a damn [about technology]. I really don’t.
  • What I care about is, is my business going to generate revenue? Am I serving my customers? Is my website going to go down, and I have to be the one who tells you? Or can I go out on a Friday night and not worry about my business?
  • The guy was doing very well. I believe he was making either 40k or 400k a month. He was doing very well. This guy got pretty interested, and he said, “Hey, I’ve got to take a look at this market.” He spent about four or five months really doing deep research. Lots of stuff, including ad words, including customer research, including buying all the other products.
  • Once we got those right, sales skyrocketed.  [Patrick notes: cough read writeup in Fortune Magazine cough] I’ll just say that it’s very, very important to understand the words that your client or your customer is using and be able to explain how and why you can help them.
  • I think we don’t pay nearly enough attention to the exact words people use. Maybe we would if we came from a communications background. Nothing motivates people like having their own words repeated right back to them, which is something that you should try to do more often. It’s just an easy conversational hack to sound more persuasive.
  • But you have to make your prospective clients feel like you understand where they’re coming from. And that starts with both understanding where they’re coming from, and then communicating like you understand where they’re coming from. Even if you’re building a website for someone, it’s not just a website, right?
Jas P

Kyro Beshay: Hacking Behavior: The Behavior Potential - 0 views

kyrobeshay.com/...ehavior-the-behavior-potential

growth hacking Customer development customer validation

shared by Jas P on 13 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • One of the most popular theories on the phases of behavior change is known as the Transtheoretical Model. It outlines five phases that lead to an alteration in one’s behavior: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance. Here is a quick overview of each phase: Precontemplation: Individual is unaware that their behavior is a problem. Contemplation: Individual is aware that their behavior is an issue and is ambivalent as to whether action should be taken. Preparation: Individual plans to take action in the near future – a “window of opportunity” has opened. Action: Individual has made specific overt modifications to their lifestyle. Maintenance & Relapse Prevention: Individual take steps to avoid factors that increase the risk of relapse.
  • The Behavior Potential illustrates the common cycle of awareness, motivation, action and frustration we often experience when trying to change our ways, with each spike representing a single attempt. The goal is to manipulate the phases of the Behavior Potential so that:
  • Phase 0: Precontemplation – Get Views During this phase, no one has seen your product, and so the goal is to get it in front of people, which is where Growth Hacking comes into play.
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  • Phase 1: Contemplation & Preparation – Present The Problem & Solution So you’ve finally found someone to look at your product. Now your goal is to convince them they have a horrific problem and that you have a remarkable solution. This is something I see less and less. Startups will often litter their landing pages with all the great features they’ve developed, which gains them absolutely nothing if they’ve not yet convinced the viewer there’s actually something in their life that could be improved. To do this, there are 4 basic principles: Describe the problem in your viewer’s terms. Walk through examples of life with and without the problem. Outline a plan of attack. Socially validate the legitimacy of the problem with user feedback. Individuals in these stages are often ambivalent as to whether they should actually put forth effort into changing. Individuals in this stage go back and forth between reasons for concern, and justification for lack of it, with awareness of the pros for changing and an acute awareness of the cons. Show them that the benefits of switching outweigh the costs.
  • Phase 2: Action & Maintenance – Reward, Reward, Reward You’ve convinced someone to start using your product, and now you want to ensure that they’ll keep using it. The way we lengthen Phase 2, or sustain a behavioral change, is by simultaneously reinforcing the behavior while recognizing the situations which create an increased risk of relapse.
  • Reinforcement strengthens behavior – a core component of operant conditioning. There are two types of reinforcement: positive and negative. Positive reinforcement is the introduction of a positive stimulus, while negative reinforcement is the removal of a negative stimulus. An example of positive reinforcement is a mother laughing at her child’s joke, positively reinforcing that particular behavior, and likely resulting in her hearing that joke a lot more often.
  • Phase 3: Relapse – Your Rewards Aren’t Rewarding Relapse prevention involves recognizing the factors that may lead to one reverting back to their old habits, so if you find your users becoming disengaged, then there is likely a flaw in your reinforcement mechanism. The user finds it easier to not use your product. You may have convinced them that your solution is better in theory, but in practice it isn’t. To prevent relapse, constantly measure user engagement and adjust your reinforcers accordingly. Work towards bridging the gap between what you’re selling and what your users are experiencing.
Jas P

How to Handle Price Objections - 0 views

www.quicksprout.com/...w-to-handle-pricing-objections

pricing

shared by Jas P on 15 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Create case studies If you really want to show the value in what you offer, you have to create case studies. The simple ones won’t cut it, you have to give detailed ones… ideally with the exact things you provided and the results. To legitimize the case studies, make sure you put in testimonials from customers. This can be done in the form of video or text and if you happen to go the text route, make sure you include: Their full name Company name Their picture Title at the company If you want to see an example of a good case study, check this one out from Conversion Rate Experts.
  • Offer a free trial One of the easiest ways to handle price objections is to offer a free trial. Remember, just because you are offering a free trial doesn’t mean you can’t take a credit card up front. With Crazy Egg, one of our biggest objections from people is that our prices are too high. We created a “free trial” offering in which people had to put in their credit card up front. That offer converted at 59% higher than our 30 day money back guarantee offer. Keep in mind that you will get a lot of people who will cancel your service before their free trial is up, so when you a/b test this you have to also include cancelations into your calculations.
  • Explain the value The easiest way to demand a high price point is to explain how much money you are going to either make a company, or how much money you will save them. If you can explain this in an easy to understand fashion and provide case studies to back it up, it shouldn’t be hard to demand a premium price. A great way to do this is through sales copy. And don’t worry, your copy doesn’t have to be sleazy. I do this with Crazy Egg, NeilPatel.com and I also used to do it for my Quick Sprout Traffic System. You could even spice up your sales copy by including a video incase people don’t want to read your copy.
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  • Offer payment plans When I used to sell the Quick Sprout Traffic System, some people felt it was a bit too expensive. They didn’t like the fact that I was charging $197 for an eBook, and video/audio training. Instead of reducing the price I tested out a few payment plan options: 3 payments of $97. 4 payments of $67. Although both pricing plans in total were more expensive than the original price of $197, the 3 payments plan option converted at 34% more than the original offering and the 4 payment plan option converted at 52% better than the original. With the 3 payment plan option I still got complaints about my prices being too high, but with the 4 payment plan option, I got almost no complaints. Plus I was able to charge more than the original price of $197.
  • Explain what you don’t charge for Just like any good business, you want to go above and beyond for your customers. Which is why you probably provide a few little extra things for your customers at no charge. When people start to complain about your price points, you should explain how you go the extra mile for your customers and all of the little things you do for free. You can even express this on your website by bundling all of that extra stuff you provide into a “free bonus” for anyone that purchases your product or service.
  • Explain why your price points are high If people understand why your prices are what they are, they’ll be more likely to pay them. Tell them your fix costs, explain what their money is being spent on, and even tell them your profit margins. People know you are in business to make money, but no one wants to feel like they are being screwed over. If your margins are reasonable and you explain your costs to potential customers, they shouldn’t have an issue. For example, Single Grain had an issue in which potential customers felt their prices were too expensive. Instead of reducing their prices they explained to the companies why they charge so much, then they broke down their costs and even shared their margins. By doing this they were able to sign on 33% more new customers.
  • Offer lower price points for less and then upsell Now this won’t work for all businesses, but you could lower your price by offering a limited version of your product or service. Plus if people are happy and looking for more, it creates upsell opportunities. I actually had this happen to me when I tried hiring a copywriter by the name of Michael Williams. I didn’t want to pay his fee of $12,000 so he sold me on a smaller package that only cost me $3000. Funny enough, after 2 months, I went back to him and paid an additional $9000 to receive the rest of his services as I had a huge ROI on my initial investment. At KISSmetrics, upsells make up almost 10% of our new monthly revenue. We’ve found that a lot of companies at first don’t want to pay for our higher plans, but within 3 months of using our product, they’ll upgrade to a higher end plan after seeing a positive ROI.
  • Focus on how you are better than the competition If people didn’t see the value in cars like BMW or Mercedes Benz, they would just buy something affordable like a KIA. The fact is a car like a BMW or Mercedes Benz not only has more features than a KIA, but also is better built. Consider creating a comparison chart that shows how you differ from the competition. This is done on the homepage of Crazy Egg. It provided a single digit increase in conversions, so not a huge boost but better than nothing at all. It also reduced support questions by almost half in regards to our prices versus our competitors’ prices.
  • Stress the drawbacks of a lower price point In many cases, lower prices will come with a drawback. If you can explain the drawbacks of the lower price you can persuade people to pay your premium prices. A good example of this is RackSpace. They are one of the largest hosting companies and possibly one of the most expensive. They charge a lot, but their uptime rate is phenomenal. If you ever speak with one of their sales representatives they’ll quickly explain they are expensive, but they rarely if ever go down. They’ll also explain that their competitors may be cheaper but tend to go down more often. Then finally they’ll close hard at the end by asking what it would cost you every minute your website is down. For this reason they have done extremely well with their high price points. The company is worth almost 9 billion dollars as of today.
  • Leverage perceptual price points There are a lot of little tricks you can do to make your price points seem like they are lower than they actually are. Walmart has actually mastered this. Instead of charging you $50 for something, they’ll charge you $49.97. That way you emotionally feel like you are getting a good deal. If you want to learn more about physiological pricing, you should check out this blog post on KISSmetrics. It has some great tactics with examples you can use and learn from. Even the smallest thing can have a huge impact on your sales. Such as removing the “$” sign from your price points, which can cause a boost in sales and reduce price objections.
Jas P

Must-read for founders: A VC explains how to build a killer value proposition | Venture... - 0 views

venturebeat.com/...killer-value-proposition

pricing vc startup idea validation

shared by Jas P on 18 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • In its simplest terms, a value proposition is a positioning statement that describes for whom you do what uniquely well. It describes your target buyer, the problem you solve, and why you’re distinctly better than the alternatives. One of the classic mistakes of building a value proposition is diving headlong into the solution definition phase before really understanding the problem you’re looking to solve. To understand whether it’s a problem worth solving, I recommend exercising four U’s: Is the problem unworkable? Does your solution fix a broken business process where there are real, measureable consequences to inaction? Is fixing the problem unavoidable? Is it driven by a mandate with implications associated with governance or regulatory control? For example, is it driven by a fundamental requirement for accounting or compliance? Is the problem urgent? Is it one of the top three priorities? In selling to enterprises, you’ll find it hard to command the attention and resources to get a deal done if you fall below this line. Is the problem underserved? Is there a conspicuous absence of valid solutions to the problem you’re looking to solve? Focus where there’s whitespace, not scorched earth.
Jas P

Elad Blog: Signs A VC Is Just Not That Into You - 0 views

blog.eladgil.com/...is-just-not-that-into-you.html

funding vc

shared by Jas P on 18 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • A VC who is interested in your company will usually define specific next steps at the end of the meeting.  E.g. "Why don't I get you together with 2-3 of my other partners later this week?" or "I will follow up with you quickly by Wednesday and we can discuss the data I need and next steps".
  • An uninterested VC will not suggest anything tangible to happen but will talk more in generalities.  E.g. "We should definitely keep in touch on this - I love you guys and your model".  This is a no, even though it sounds sort of like a yes.  Vague, positive-sounding generalities from VCs are almost always nos.
  • The most ambiguous situation is the data request without any further in person meetings.  In some cases, this is a legitimate request so the VC can quote data to get their partners interested in investing in your company.
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  • Some firms use associates to screen their deals before a partner meets with your company.   If you can get to a partner directly from day one, you should.  If you are passed on to an associate and never hear from a partner again after meeting with the associate, the VC just isn't that into you.
  • If a VC is into you she will prioritize your emails for reply.  This means you should hear back on many emails within the same day, and the rest of the emails within at worst about a week if they are e.g. travelling.  If it takes a VC more then a week to reply to most of your emails, she just isn't that into you.
  • If the VC does not spend the last 5 minutes trying to sell you on her firm, or offer introductions or help, she may not be that into you.
Jas P

Mobile Apps: HTML5 vs Native - 0 views

www.ericsink.com/...html5_vs_native_apps.html

mobile app development

shared by Jas P on 21 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • The question The main question in play here is: How thick should clients be? Let me define my terms: I define the Client as the thing which is used by exactly one user, which interacts directly with that user, and which is probably physically close to that person. I define the Server as the thing which is shared by multiple users, which interacts directly with the Client, and which could be physically located anywhere. I define the Pipe as the connection between the Client and the Server. I define the notion of a Thick client as a relative term. Thicker clients have more app-specific code and are less dependent on the Server. Thinner clients leave more of the app-specific work to be done on the Server. There are two main variables in decisions about the thickness of clients: The quality of the Pipe: This includes bandwidth, latency, availability, reliability, and cost The Client side costs: This includes cost of hardware, software development, deployment, upgrades, and maintenance. And, there are two laws which apply: As the quality of the pipe goes up, the client can get thinner. As the client side costs go down, the client can get thicker.
  • This issue is not new Back in the 1960s and 1970s, when we only had mainframes and minicomputers, there was a distinction between smart terminals (thick clients) and dumb terminals (thin clients). In the 1980s, we got workstations (really expensive thick clients, purchased by people who perceived them as cheap compared to the mainframes and minis) and microcomputers (far less expensive thick clients, purchased by people who previously didn't have a computer at all). In the early 1990s, the high cost of workstations gave rise to X terminals, thin client devices which couldn't do much more than display the graphical user interface. My manager bought one of those fancy new 19.2k modems and actually tried doing Motif widget development from home. In the mid 1990s, web browsers appeared. For a very brief time, this technology was regarded only as a way to collaborate on hypertext documents. This phase of the web lasted for most of an afternoon. Meanwhile, back in Champaign, Illinois, the Unsung Hero and His Eminence were busy building a web browser which had more "stuff" in it. What kind of stuff? The sort of stuff that made web browsers into a platform for delivery of apps. And the technologies of the web have been moving primarily in that direction ever since. Java applets (developed a fatal disease called Swing) ActiveX (declared dead seven years after it went missing) Flash (murdered by Steve Jobs) Silverlight (murdered by HTML5) In the late 1990s, people (Oracle, I think?) tried to sell something called a Network Computer. It was a little PC with a video card, some RAM, an ethernet card, a web browser, and no hard disk. Thin.
  • HTML5 arrived. Actually, the spec is still a long way from being finalized, but nobody knows that. People needed a name, so they started saying "HTML5" before it was fully cooked. Common usage of the term "HTML5" is actually fairly accurate, at least compared to the way telecom companies use the term "4G". And now, this war has moved to the battlefield of mobile. Smartphones and tablets.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Black and white As I said above, people exhibit a black-and-white mentality about this issue. In part, this is because people who make polarizing predictions tend to sound more visionary. In some situations, being inspiring is far more important than being correct.
  • Another reason that people like to hear black-or-white predictions about the future is that it makes them feel better. Uncertainty is uncomfortable.
  • nobody likes articles like this one, essays which claim that the world is defined in shades of gray. This is why you stopped reading two scroll bars ago.
  • Nonetheless, for this round, I'm betting on native apps, for three reasons: Recent declines in Client side costs. For example, the App Store makes a huge difference in issues of installation and upgrades. Current problems with quality of the Pipe. Users of smartphones and tablets have high expectations regarding the quality of the user experience. My own preference. I'd rather spend my time creating products that delight users. Wal-Mart may be successful, but the goal of making everything cheaper just doesn't look like much fun.
  • But native apps are just better. They always have been. That's why they cost more.
  • web apps and native apps can and will coexist.
  • Jas P on 21 Oct 12
     
    Nice breakdown on the differences between building a thin (html5, etc) vs thick (native) mobile app.
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