Saas metrics are in abundance when it comes to qualifying leads or potential customers. Various analogies are taken into account like ticket size, effort to move to the platform. In the early days of product development and onboarding customers, my learning has been different. Customers or teams who are empathetic with you during the trial …
Category Archives: startups
Customers
Customers who care for you want to work with you will treat you as part of their internal team. They are part of your product development team. You have to listen and get every clue from their feedback, usage patterns. My friends tell me why am I so transparent with them, the simple reason is …
Believers
I keep hearing from my friends and experienced sales folks about closing. My last 24 hours experience has been different. There is no one fit for all. A sale is about solving customer’s pain, delighting him. Closing the revenue target is a byproduct. A sale is about making him or her comfortable. It is about …
On Softbank
I know Covid19 has had the biggest impact on a shared economy. Companies like Uber, WeWork, OYO are struggling to stay afloat. Layoff stories are everyday things now. Matayoshi Son, the visionary behind Softbank fund is in the midst of all these crises. His vision fund 1 had to right off many investments. Venture Capital …
Sales
I read Sequoia Capital post on sales. It covers many aspects brilliantly. I am adding some below: Perceived values: Work on marketing your product and increase it. Don’t sell for cheap: Apply decoy effect if it helps. Know your pinch point: Find the fat tail, people who will pay most. My sales journey has taught …
important
With a small team and limited resources, one has to be very cautious in what they are building. In the era of COVID19 sales have slowed down, license renewal has gone on hold. When you are a small team and get a constant influx of ideas, getting carried away and building some new feature or …
align
In the early days of a startup, we have everything at stake. Chances of failing are more than making big. It is important to have a solid founding team who can go against all odds. Each one of us has to be open with our goals and should have priorities aligned with the organization. Most …
bug
You have to be crazy to run a startup. 9 out of 10 times things get screwed. Be it team, customer, product, legal, investors or partnership. Nothing is certain. We have limited things in our control. The outcome like the shiny unicorn also depends on many externalities. All we have to do is to keep …
Effort and Incentive
We are lazy. All technological advancement: the washing machine, mixer grinder, and many others invented for the same. We don’t like changing habits as well. Making someone adapt to a new system is super challenging. Unless we are incentivized or rewarded 10X our effort, we are not switching our existing workflow. An incentive for your …
luxury
Since IMF is formally announced we are in a recession, a tough time is here. They also mentioned that this one is going to be worst that 2007. I am sure time will tell us more about it. But in the current scenario, things are messy. We are all indoors, everything is shut and the …