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"More than 95% of Zappos' transactions take place over the Web, so each actual phone call is a special opportunity. "They may only call once in their life, but that is our chance to wow them," Hsieh says."
Far more common is a need to acquire customers through a series of steps like SEO, SEM, PR, Social Marketing, direct sales, channel sales, etc. that will cost the company significant amounts of money. What shocks and surprises many first time entrepreneurs is just how high the numbers are for CAC using these kinds of techniques.
Read the whole post..you might want to plaster this one to your whiteboard.
I like Sull's explanation of things you shouldn't do in the midst of turbulence. About 3:00 minutes in.
Marc Kramer
"Why does anyone need what we're selling?"
"All too often we fall into the trap that people want something because we like it. This is the road to perdition. In our case, there was never a formal survey done to determine if anyone cared whether our magazines existed. We never asked readers/potential readers what they wanted to read. In my 25 years of experience, I have rarely seen a company fail if management literally spoke to customers and gave them what they want."
Dev Patnik's thoughts on spurring along innovation made me think of what's happening inside organizations with aggressive innovation agendas.
Here's three of his four thoughts:
*Reinvent the core business
*Expand beyond the core
*Face down an existential threat
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Of course to move innovation forward, companies need to have their internal practices polished and primed for collaboration inside and outside the firewall.
I've spoken to a number of clients recently that head innovation practices and the obvious push is around better ways of sharing information. In other words, what's the fastest way to facilitate innovation discussions. And beyond that, how do I take the byproducts of those conversations and turn them into actionable intelligence. It's that intelligence that ultimately moves the needle.
Startup 3
Entrepreneur - “I’m competing against Large Company X and we solve problems for a set of customers – I’ve talked to many of them and they would buy it.”
Me – “So what’s the problem?”
Entrepreneur – “We just started letting early customers access the product and adoption/sales isn’t taking off the way we thought it would. We only have 20 customers, and Large Company X has millions.”
Me – “How are you positioning your product?”
Entrepreneur – “We tell potential customers about all our features.”Rule 3: In an existing market directly compare your product against the incumbent and specifically describe the problems you solve and why Company X’s products do not.”
Let me say it again..features don't drive a business strategy.
Founder of the Dearing Group LLC., a consultancy focused on communications and sustainability.
George can be reached via email at george@dearinggroup.com or on social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed. Subscribe to this site via RSS here.
Note: All content on this site is the personal opinion of George Dearing and doesn't represent the views of my past, current or future employers or their clients.
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