Home

Early Customer Stage

Failure to Thrive
Posted on Friday, April 1, 2011 - 09:45 by Sean Murphy from the site SKMurphy
“Death did not come with the thunderous gallop of a pale horse nor the wicked song of a blackened scythe hissing through the air.
Sean Murphy
Posted in
Video: Early Revenue For Enterprise Web Apps
Posted on Wednesday, March 2, 2011 - 01:44 by Sean Murphy from the site SKMurphy
This interactive webinar was for SaaS firms faced with an “enterprise sales” challenge by virtue of their minimum price point or number of job boundaries, business processes, or contractual relationships that  have to change to create value.
Sean Murphy
Posted in
Prepare and Rehearse Your Answer to “How Do We Get Started?”
Posted on Friday, February 4, 2011 - 23:59 by Sean Murphy from the site SKMurphy
From “Five Things to Remember When Selling a New Product” What is the next step? A serious prospect will be able to outline at a high level what’s involved in the evaluation and purchase of your product. At the same time you need to be prepared to outline the process you would like to follow.
Sean Murphy
Posted in
Our “Entrepreneur’s Guide To Sales” Added To Chicago MBA Coursepack
Posted on Thursday, February 3, 2011 - 09:37 by Sean Murphy from the site SKMurphy
Mark Duncan and I collaborated on a four page  article “An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Sales” that was designed as an adjunct to a custom sales training workshop. It’s intended for entrepreneurial engineers who need to develop and debug a B2B sales process. Most articles and books on sales are intended for people who sell.
Sean Murphy
Posted in
If Money Doesn’t Change Hands, You Can’t Call a User a Customer.
Posted on Thursday, December 23, 2010 - 20:04 by Sean Murphy from the site SKMurphy
Here is another excerpt from my September interview with Gabriel Weinberg. This one focuses on why payment and testimonials are so important to differentiate users from actual customers. yegg: So you are OK with a lower price for the first few customers, but you do want some money changing hands? skmurphy: Yes, yes we do, typically a nominal amount that doesn’t trigger the need for budget escalation or other kinds of negotiations. And, we are talking about the very first few customers.
Sean Murphy
Posted in
Keeping the Ball Rolling With Prospects
Posted on Monday, December 13, 2010 - 22:55 by Sean Murphy from the site SKMurphy
Most of our clients offer complex software products, frequently in combination with some amount of consulting services. Their sales are not the results of credit card transactions but a complex orchestrated sales process.
Sean Murphy
Posted in
Quick Thoughts on Selling For Software Engineers
Posted on Friday, December 10, 2010 - 01:19 by Sean Murphy from the site SKMurphy
“People won’t pay you to solve problems that you know they have, only the problems that they know they have.” William Pietri Simple Sales Model A very simple sales model is that your prospect has to understand what your offering does, believe that you can deliver, and then find a reason to act.
Sean Murphy
Posted in
Nomadic Entrepreneurs In Indigenous Markets
Posted on Sunday, November 14, 2010 - 19:48 by Sean Murphy from the site SKMurphy
I came across an interview with David Mamet by Richard Covington for Salon in 1997 and was struck by how this passage could also apply to entrepreneurs entering an established market with a new product: …come into a new situation where they aren’t particularly welcome, assess the situation as quickly as they can and make something new out of it, make a new solution that hasn’t occurred to the indigenous people because the indigenous people have been there too long. Here is a longer excerpt for context, hyperlinks added to original. Q: Why do you say in your book “On
Sean Murphy
Posted in
Good Decision, Bad Outcome
Posted on Friday, November 5, 2010 - 09:32 by Sean Murphy from the site SKMurphy
You never have complete information, if you do it’s a choice not a decision. You have to evaluate a decision in the context of the information that was available at the time. “Good Decision, Bad Outcome” When I first heard someone use this phrase it took a few weeks to sink in. Too often we infer the quality of the decision from the results alone.
Sean Murphy
Posted in
What To Do When An Early Prospect is Excited
Posted on Wednesday, November 3, 2010 - 09:09 by Sean Murphy from the site SKMurphy
Here is another excerpt from my September interview with Gabriel Weinberg. This one is focused on what to do when encounter a B2B prospect who is excited your product (perhaps this is only the first or second time this has happened with someone who wasn’t a friend or prior associate). The short answer to what to do when an early prospect is excited: prove that your product works on their data, in their environment, in a way that gives you a deep understanding of the impact on their business and the value that you are creating for them.
Sean Murphy
Posted in
Syndicate content