On Monday, the 27th, we had a great opportunity to learn from two high profile figures in entrepreneurship - Donna Novitsky from Mohr Davidow Ventures and Penny Herscher from firstRain, Inc., discussed marketing strategy and sales in a start-up context.
Having been a part of an entrepreneurial venture in my past life, I could really relate to what Donna was talking about regarding marketing strategy for a start-up. In our situation, we had little service /experience to speak of...but a ton of sales and lots of claims. It was always a matter of sell, sell, sell, and let's try to figure it out how to do it later. As a project manager at the time, I never thought this made a lot of sense. We won't go into all of the madness that ensued as a result too.
At the same time, there's definitely another side to this - how some start-ups are so concerned about getting the product or service right that they never sell anything. (Donna discussed this too, as a common flaw) In that regard, I guess we did, at least, secure a steady revenue stream that paid for my salary. My sense is that this depends on how much cash you can access.
The point is, in a start-up, everything is tough, and nothing works perfectly. A big company already has a market, reputation, strategies, and customers...at a start-up, there is often close to nothing. So that's why understanding how to efficiently and effectively establish a marketing plan is so absolutely critical. And anybody who's been through the storm knows that it's easier said than done...
But next time around, I came away feeling like it could be done better. And a lot of these lessons can be applied to big companies wanting to be more flexible and faster.
Other things that were discussed that were poignant:
- don't take on early-beta customers unless you are 80% sure that they are going to actually be paying customers. (make tough choices)
- talk to customers first (30 customers in 3 months, as a good benchmark) Focusing on listening, to really understand cusotmer needs.
- selling consulting projects (not scalable)
- ramping development before market is proven (great product, no market / costly)
- product insufficiently defined
Just in case, you are not sure what I'm talking about, this was a talk that was given at the Haas school as part of the Best Practices Series. The Best Practices Series brings the top practitioners from Berkeley and the Silicon Valley Community to speak about the practical aspects of entrepreneurial activity.
