Ventureweek

From: topsalesmanagement.com

by: Linda Richardson

Over the past few decades, selling has changed. The changes have been incremental, giving salespeople time to adjust. Not so today. The degree and speed of change in the sales world over the past two years is revolutionary – in how, why, and when customers buy and, therefore, in how you sell.

Selling has been turned on its head, and sales organizations are trying to catch up. If you have any doubts about the magnitude of change, just think about your level of control over the last major retail purchase you made and multiply that by twenty, and you will have a sense of the revolution in buying that is going on with your customers. The revolution has created a shift of control – away from you as a seller and toward your customer.

The bottom line is this: There is a need to increase your preparation and knowledge so you can bring more to the table. Today’s customers want and need business advice around your customized product solution. What does advice look like? How do you deliver it? Advice comes in the form of a point of view, shared experience, resources, expertise, insights, new ideas, and new ways to look at old problems, research, and contacts. Giving advice requires confidence, and having it acted on demands credibility, commitment, and solution co-creation.

In my work at Richardson and at Wharton, I have identified seven essential changes in selling in this new sales world:

1. Intensify Your Preparation – Conduct deeper preparation and leverage the internet, research, and your team to gain a deep understanding of your customer’s business and anticipate the customer’s business challenges and opportunities. Learn everything you can about your competitors. (Your prepared customers know a lot about them and will test you.)

2. Question Differently – Leverage your preparation and expand your thoughtful and strategic questions to get under the skin of the needs and challenges you uncover or assume. Use questions to refine your customers’ thinking. Probe why, why not, and what else.

3. Control With – Increase your assertiveness by executing a sales process that defines activities and measurable outcomes for each stage. Exert control with, not over customers.

4. Expand Access – Map the customer organization, get to executives, and sell across the decision-making group to gain consensus and support and cultivate a coach. Gain consensus among your team.

5. Get Smarter – Build your business acumen and develop industry, market, and customer specific knowledge. Leverage all team members, keep abreast of research, and tap into experience with other customers. Learn from customers as much as they learn from you.

6. Co-create Solutions – Build solutions with your customers. Collaborate with customers by providing business advice, listening to them, and refining how they think about their challenges to build winning solutions.

7. Boost Your Bravery – If you are doing it, kiss any semblance of order-taking good-bye. Dig in by asking why, why not, and what else. Ask the tough questions. Introduce and champion alternatives you believe in. Take an equal place at the table. Be persistent in helping customers think outside the box. Be passionate about solving business problems.

The speed of change is unprecedented. The Beatles got it right in the song, “Revolution,” when they said, “We’d all love to see the plan.” Join us in 2012 to execute the plan and win.

Linda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales effectiveness organization. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence for 2006 and in 2007 she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Read more

Rover.com, an online marketplace connecting dog owners with local dog sitters, announced a $3.4 million Series A financing.The company enables dog owners to leave their pets in a home environment with other dog lovers, including fellow owners, neighbors and professionals. Rover.com provides dog lovers with a community of like-minded people who love to take care of dogs and more often than not are willing to do it for less money than a traditional kennel charges. The company takes a percentage of each transaction. Moreover, Rover has launched “Barkline’, a 24-hour customer service and an absolute satisfaction guarantee that covers the dog, the owner and the host. On Rover, people can review homeowners’ profiles, so they can get a sense of how the owners would treat their dogs. This is a growing space that has some strong revenue potential.

Adzuna Cars Search, is a new search engine that brings together over 300,000 used car ads from a bunch of different portals and niche cars sites across Britain.

The company plans to  personalise the classifieds search experienc,e while making the results more relevant. Adzuna has Car Personality Quiz to for their service. They say that this tool will match users with the perfect car just by answering a series of fun questions about themselves and connecting to the site via Facebook. Adzuna has already generated £800,000 pounds in investment.

Hailo, is a UK  mobile network that matches passengers and licensed taxi drivers to help keep them busy. It is similar to popular mobile service Uber but Hailo focuses on taxi cabs.

The Hailo Driver Network can be accessed via iPhone or Android apps and allow drivers to accept credit cards and factor in tipping options.

Launched five months ago, the service has acquired 3200 drivers and 200,000 passengers in London, The app makes money by taking a small cut of a Hailo-enabled cab ride. . Hailo just received a $17 million round of Series A financing. The company is quickly going to  expand into the States, starting with New York, then Chicago, Boston, Washington, DC., and Toronto and Montreal in Canada.

From Startup Professional Musings

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You hear a lot of talk these days about the importance of customer satisfaction, but customer loyalty is the real win. A satisfied customer is necessary, but not sufficient, to be a loyal customer who will come back repeatedly, refer their friends and family to you, and be faithful even when your price is not the lowest. Herein lies an opportunity for startups to beat the big guys.

Not too long ago, everybody thought customer loyalty was dead. Price was everything, and customers would switch suppliers for pennies. I think these tough economic times and social networks have re-awakened consumers to the fact that there is more to a business transaction than price. People are tired of being serviced like a commodity by a faceless computer robot.

Whatever the reasons for the change, and there are many, it represents a big opportunity to the small businesses and startups who recognize it. Building customer loyalty means a first priority on keeping the customers you already have, rather than focusing always on getting new ones.

From my own research, here is a collection of seven top tips on how a startup or any company can build and maintain real customer loyalty:

1. Communicate more personally more often. Get to know your customers, and actually call them by name, or even remember their likes and dislikes. With today’s technology, make sure they get a monthly newsletter, a reminder care for a tune-up, or a holiday greeting card personalized just for them.
2. Educate your customers on your business. Today you have the tools, like blogging, videos, and new web technologies, to explain and make your customers appreciate what you do, and how you do it better than anyone else. They haven’t lost interest in cutting costs, so help them understand how you are a leader in this regard.
3. Customer loyalty begins with employee loyalty. Loyalty works from the top down. If you are loyal to your team, they will pass that loyalty to their team, and to their customers. Employee loyalty starts with good communication and training on their role, as well as how to better interact with customers.
4. Don’t take existing customers for granted. Many businesses will do anything to win the business of a new customer, but tend to ignore existing ones. Spend as much time thinking of special ways to reward existing customers as you do rewarding that first-time new customer. Don’t ever give better deals to new customers than existing ones.
5. Provide stability in terms and prices. Most customers tend to question their own loyalty only when prices go up, or their favorite option (like challenge-free returns) goes away. Do everything you can to show your customers how they can cut their own costs and yours too, like online service. Ask your suppliers for help in maintaining margins.
6. Be reliable and flexible. If you say an item will be back in stock by Monday, make it happen. If something does go wrong, be proactive in letting customers know and compensate them for the inconvenience. Be flexible in solving your customer’s problem. The phrase “That’s our policy” should be eliminated from your lexicon.
7. Don’t let customer service slip. As your business grows, it’s easy to lose your focus on customer service, or take away the empowerment and accountability of key personnel. Customers say it takes ten good experiences to make up for one bad one. If their experiences are all good, they will tell eight other people.

Statistics also show that building loyalty and retaining current customers is 3 to 10 times cheaper than acquiring new customers. Successful businesses realize that 80 percent of their business actually comes from a stable 20 percent of their customer base. You will grow faster and more profitably by nurturing this solid base of loyal customers, who then do the best job of selling to new customers, at no cost to you.

From Mashable.com

By: Rusel DeMaria  who is the author of more than 60 books, and currently runs the High Score 3 Kickstarter project. Follow him on Twitter @DeMaria.

Double Fine, the game developer, raised $3.3 million for its adventure game, Double Fine Adventures. InXile, a game development company, made $500,000 in 17 hours for its role-playing game, Wasteland 2. Both did it on Kickstarter, the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects. Naturally, it would be easy to think of Kickstarter as a virtual Gold Rush. That would be a mistake.

1. Do Your Research

Not every project will work on Kickstarter, and even fewer will create a feeding frenzy. So do your research. Observe, for example, what has worked and what hasn’t for other project creators. To find successful examples, look at sections of the site such as “Staff Picks” or “Popular.” To find projects that have not hit their goals, look at some of those under “Ending Soon.” Obviously, projects succeed and fail for different reasons, but researching examples of each will help you get a feel for what to do and what to avoid.

2. Define Your Goal

Decide exactly what you want to accomplish and how much money you need to do that. Remember, if you don’t meet your goal, you get nothing. Better to ask a reasonable amount and then work hard to exceed that goal. Double Fine initially asked for $400,000, but blew that out of the water. If possible, have at least a group of friends who will support you with pledges from the get-go. That will help you build momentum. And remember, you cannot change the amount after you launch.

Also, think about how long your project should run. Kickstarter recommends a maximum of 30 days, but some people have succeeded with longer cycles. Consider your audience and how long it will take to get the word out when making this decision. As with the funding amount, you can’t change your project length once it’s set.

3. Consider Your Rewards and Costs

You’ll quickly learn that people want something in exchange for their pledges. Create rewards, gifts to backers based on the amount they pledge, starting at low values, like $5. That way you can reward even small-time backers. Double Fine is a good example of a project that created great rewards tailored to their audience. Their lowest reward was a digital copy of the game for $15. The highest was a private party with the developers for $10,000.

Another critical factor to consider when creating rewards are related costs. For example, if you’re going to send your backers something by mail, calculate the postage and packaging you’ll need. Don’t get blindsided and discover that your costs will cancel out a part of your funding.

4. Prepare Your Pitch

How you introduce your project can make a huge difference. On your project page you’ll describe your project, goals, and rewards. Be specific and include engaging images of your work. Kickstarter recommends that you also create a video. Make it fun, natural, and compelling by including key elements like people talking about how great or important the project is. Remember, your pitch should pump people up about your project and show both your enthusiasm and your ability to follow through.

5. Market the Hell Out of It

Once you’ve pulled the trigger and published your project, it’s time to promote via social media,friends, family, even strangers. Any updates you post will automatically be sent to your current backers, but urge them to re-post and re-tweet. If you can find a way to make your work newsworthy, pitch popular websites and newspapers.

6. Keep It Alive

Your initial marketing may bring you some early success, but you need to keep feeding the fire. Find ways to update the project. Add new and fun rewards as you go. Keep people informed about your progress, and definitely share any good news or milestones like “We’re halfway there!”

7. Listen to Your Backers

Many of your backers will offer advice. Listen. Some of them have backed many projects and know what works. Others just have an opinion, and even if you don’t agree, consider how many other people — potential investors — may think the same way.

8. Be Patient

There will be times when pledges seem to flow in steadily, and times when it seems that nobody cares. When this happens, you’ll need to stay positive and re-engage those who got you this far. Start by letting your biggest supporters know it’s time to step up and spread the word. If they’ve backed the project, then they also want it to succeed.

9. Be Flexible and Creative

Be prepared to do things you never anticipated doing. You hadn’t considered a special T-shirt as a reward? Maybe you should. A supporter offers to create limited-edition rewards to help your project? Why not? Bottom line: Be open and flexible.

10. Have Fun

This is going to be a crazy ride so enjoy it. And remember, if at first you don’t succeed

FITiST is an exciting online fitness property for fitness buffs,  who are interested in creating plans and scheduling classes across various fitness studios. FITist has already launched in New York City and Los Angeles. Health related apps and web sites have exploded in populairity recently.

FITiST, offers members a number of options . Participants can choose from a number of plans, and  class packages targeted to help accomplish different fitness goals.  The company has created an editorial board of experts in personal training and nutrition.  Some of their popular packages include “Bride” (get in shape for your wedding), as well as a, “New Mom” package . You can also sign-up for an all-access pass of unlimited classes, or create a completely customized program with FITiST’s help.

From Mashable.com

Nick Hughes is the CEO and co-founder of Seconds, a mobile commerce platform that provides text messaging and mobile payments for local commerce. In his spare time, he inspires entrepreneurs to build meaningful and enduring companies through his writing. Follow him on Twitter @jnickhughes.

Startup founders are fascinating creatures. They have to be multifaceted and dynamic, yet laser sharp and narrowly focused. During the early days, they must wear many hats and perform a variety of foreign duties, such as HR, PR, sales, marketing and product design. Above all, they have to be just a little bit crazy to even think about stepping into the roller coaster lifestyle called entrepreneurship.

As crazy as they may seem, the entrepreneur’s many duties create a uniquely talented individual. Yet subtle differences in personality and perspective can determine success or failure.

The talents listed below are detailed in the book Now Discover Your Strengths, a great read for anyone looking to improve on his or her unique talents.  In the book you’re introduced to the StrengthsFinder metric, which measures the presence of 34 different categories of talent. According to the StrengthsFinder, “Talents are people’s naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied. The more dominant a theme is in a person, the greater the theme’s impact on that person’s behavior and performance. ”

Some talents are essential to a startup founder. Without the presence of these five specific talents, it would be very difficult to start and grow a new venture.

1. Activator

According the the StrengthsFinder, “People strong in the Activator theme can make things happen by turning thoughts into action. They are often impatient.”

If there is one talent all founders must possess, it’s the Activator. Activators find ways to simply get things started and make things happen, which is synonymous with the definition of a leader. Activators build out the core founding team, establish the general “idea” and strategic direction, line up legal representation, find office space, organize meetings, etc.

An Activator jumps up and say to his friends “Hey, let’s start a new company!” Some people have a hard time breaking from their ruts in life, but not Activators. They never fall into ruts because they are always starting something different or recruiting others to join them and their new pursuits.

Take for example Jason Jacobs, co-founder of the fitness app RunKeeper. While training for a marathon in 2007, he was using Nike+ and realized the world needed a simple, independent, open health metrics platform. As an Activator, he formed a company and convinced others to join. Another truism of entrepreneurship in action? You usually have no idea what you are doing, but you just learn as you go.

Do you have what it takes to make the jump, knowing you’ll be learning as you go?

2. Adaptability

According the the StrengthsFinder, “People strong in the Adaptability theme prefer to ‘go with the flow.’ They tend to be ‘now’ people who take things as they come and discover the future one day at a time.”

Nothing in a startup ever goes as planned, and thus, startup founders must be able to adapt to changing circumstances. Successful founders go with the flow of startup culture, where markets change quickly, funding seems both eminent and impossible, co-founders come and go, and products evolve.

Pivoting (i.e., adaptability) is essential to today’s startups. Smart founders should initiate the process not with the “dream company concept” in mind, but rather, with the commitment and pursuit of solving a consumer problem.

You’ve probably heard of Instagram, the breakout photo sharing app that has attracted more than 27 million downloads. But you might not have heard of Burbn, which was what the founders built before changing to “Instagram.” Co-founder Kevin Systrom explains how they launched the service primarily as a checkin, social geo-location app, on which users could quickly upload photos and share them with friends. Burbn had attracted a core following of users, but was not exactly taking off. Upon further evaluation the founders noticed that photo uploading was the strongest and most used feature. Going with the flow, they cut all other features and moved forward with the newly minted Instagram. Twenty-seven million users later, I think they made the right choice.

Do you have the guts to cut 95% of your existing product and redirect its focus if necessary?

3. Strategic

According the the StrengthsFinder, “People strong in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.”

Acute pattern recognition, finding alternative ways to succeed, spotting signal and relevance from all the noise — this is strategic thinking. It’s what separates the idea-and-fail group from the execute-and-succeed group.

Strategic thinking names the company, defines what makes you unique, finds where in the market to position your product, determines how to best orient the value proposition, discovers how users will find your service, and figures out who will ultimately become a strategic partner. This requires a founder to see the entire competitive landscape, to understand where the holes are, and to align the company in the appropriate position for success.

Steve Jobs was probably the best strategic thinker we have encountered in recent history. It’s no coincidence Apple has risen to become the most valuable company in the world; Steve Jobs realized computing was not just about productivity, but that people wanted to be liberated, creative and entertained. Jobs determined to create a computing and entertainment ecosystem around the entire consumer.

How did he recognize this potential? Jobs turned the corner when he decided to make a better portable music player and integrate iTunes into the computing experience. He noticed that consumers wanted a hub, one place to access all their music and entertainment. After taking the music industry by storm, he made computing mobile with the iPhone and the iPad, again reinventing computing for the post-PC era. Finally, the advent of the App Store opened an entirely new market for millions of entrepreneurs, and has already generated billions of dollars in less than five years.

Although we lost him late last year, Jobs may not be done transforming our world. Apple TV has the potential to change how we interact with digital content. Jobs did all this by seeing around corners, observing the how and why of the consumer, and using strategic thinking every time he made a decision.

Do you see and understand all angles of your market, and have the ability to spot patterns or counterintuitive trends?

4. Discipline

According the the StrengthsFinder, “People strong in the Discipline theme enjoy routine and structure. Their world is best described by the order they create.”

Entrepreneurship has an entropic feel to it — each day is totally different. Roles and responsibilities can pull a founder in so many directions that he can feel lost in the chaos. Therefore, establishing routine and structure is essential to moving a business forward.

Discipline is what forces a founder to fill his calendar with customer discovery interviews each week to help uncover the problem they are trying to solve. Discipline is also what keeps foundering teams together, often when founders are working two jobs and struggling to make time for the business. Discipline keeps the startup lean, efficient and moving forward.

The “lean startup movement” can be loosely defined as a focus on discipline. Eric Reis and other lean startup proponents teach principles such as “fail fast,” “iterate quickly,” and “release, test, evaluate, toss out what doesn’t work and stick with what does.” Validated learning — or the constant search to establish your market, value proposition and ultimately your initial customer segments — is all about discipline for the early founder.

Based on the teachings of people like Reis, we have finally determined startups aren’t all built on lucky breaks, but rather on a methodical and disciplined approach to finding a sustainable business.

Do you have the daily discipline to methodically test your value proposition, product and customers to find a sustainable and repeatable business model?

5. Focus

According the the StrengthsFinder, “People strong in the Focus theme can take a direction, follow through, and make the corrections necessary to stay on track. They prioritize, then act.”

You have 100 things to do today, but you only have time to accomplish three. Which ones do you get done?

You may have all the talents described above, but if you cannot focus on the right things, you will not succeed. Focus takes your discipline, narrows it down on the essential few things that are important, and makes sure you get them done. How many people do you know who have said they are starting some new venture only to tell you six months later they just couldn’t get going and are already doing something different? These people might be an Activator and even excel in strategic thinking, but if they cannot focus in on what’s important each day, they will never get to the next level.

Launching a successful company can be one of the most challenging experiences in your life. Don’t make it any harder than it needs to be. Focusing on the critically important and dismissing all other distractions will make all the difference.

Noah Kagan, chief Sumo of AppSumo, explains how focusing on the important tasks will not only improve daily efficiency, but will significantly benefit business as well. He describes it as “maximizing the best use of your time.”

Ask yourself, which are the most important tasks on which your business depends?  Now, focus on those and only those tasks. Evaluate all the other stuff on your plate and delegate accordingly. Trying to do everything will result in getting nothing done.

Startup founders are indeed uniquely talented individuals. Do you think you have what it takes to be a successful founder?

Scoot Networks, an exciting green automotive startup, is looking to become the Zipcar of electric mopeds. Scoot Networks will have a  fleet available to rent for various time periods, under a plan that  combines aspects of bike-sharing with the business model of Zipcar. Customers will be able to reserve a scooter through their smartphone app.  The company is testing out the service in San Francisco and is looking to expand quickly. Their  unlimited monthly pass would cost $100 to $150. It will be interesting to see if electric scooters catch on and what other players will enter the industry.

Written by Greg Muender who is President of of Ticket Kick

From: entrepreneurinmaking.com

Getting your startup off the ground takes cash. There are a number of ways to raise funding for your business, but with every investment dollar you accept you sell a piece of the startup’s soul. You want to be able to focus on building a great product, not on balancing the ideas and priorities of a pool of investors.

That means bootstrapping. Bootstrapping opens up a whole new set of possibilities that you just don’t have with investors. Here are some of the ways bootstrapping can help your startup shine: