Customer Development

Appreciative Inquiry Mindset Essential to Customer Discovery

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a mindset that is essential in customer discovery. It encourages you to look for what’s working in an potential customer’s organization and “work with the grain of the wood.” It enables you to build on demonstrated strengths and accomplishments in framing your solution to a critical business problem.

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Customer Development Conversations With Busy Prospects

Question from an entrepreneur in the midst of customer discovery for a new product. Q: We are preparing to launch our first product in a few months. Next week there is a conference sponsored by a professional society that represents one of our potential target markets.  We have already done about a dozen customer discovery

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It’s the Picture on the Box that Sells the LEGO Set

A common  complaint an entrepreneur voices when they first try to explain why a prospect should pay for their product: “It’s difficult expressing the value proposition in just a few words because there are so many different ways to use it.” Many an entrepreneur with a new product Here are some things to try to

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Selling to a Business Requires Conversations that Build Trust

I am always interested in having a conversation with a prospect. If you are hoping to infer needs from seeing them press a menu button with an icon or one or two words on it I think that’s a poor substitute for a conversation. I know that people cannot always predict what they need or

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SKMurphy, Inc. 8 Years In: What We Are Working On Now

Steve Blank: “Sean Murphy adds tremendous value for startups in setting them up “getting out of the building” and how to make sense of the data they’ve gathered. He’s one consultant I personally know (I’m sure there are others) who doesn’t confuse his role with the founders. I think of his consulting firm as a

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Crucial Customer Development Concepts At GITPRO Sat-Jun-18

I have been invited to speak at the Global Indian Technical Professional (GITPRO) on “Crucial Customer Development Concepts” this Saturday June 18.  I will outline key customer development insights and some rules of thumb for successful innovation in Silicon Valley. I will cover concepts that form the basis for conventional wisdom on customer development in

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How To Determine Your Competition During Customer Discovery

Want a simple way to determine your competition during customer discovery:  consider what your prospects would have to give up to buy and use your product or service.  The time and money you want prospects to spend on your offering have to come from somewhere:  prospects will normally  choose to take it from what they

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We Use a Wiki to Organize Customer Interviews

“The only certainty is a reasonable probability.” Edgar Watson Howe, “Country Town Sayings” We help clients to interview prospects in the early market for customer discovery purposes, we also help them have serious conversations with early customers periodically to capture their evolving perspective on the client’s offering. Sometimes we will do this on the client’s behalf

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Signed up for Startup Lessons Learned Conference

Hope to see you on Monday, May 23, 2011 in San Francisco, CA for the Second Startup Lessons Learned conference. The day-long event will feature a mix of panels and talks focused on the key challenges and issues that technical and market-facing people at startups need to understand in order to succeed in building successful

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Connecting Technical Know-How With Customer Needs

John Cook routinely offers great insights on his blog, “The Endeavor.” He was interviewed by Vincent Tan in the March 2011 issue[PDF] of Singularity Magazine Actually applying math is hard work. It requires knowing the limits of your abstractions. It may require writing software or writing English prose. It requires skills outside of mathematics in

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Mapping the Path to Your First Dollar of Revenue – Handout

Here is the handout from this morning’s Bootstrapper Breakfast® in Walnut Creek. Mapping the Path to Your First Dollar of Revenue Sean Murphy, SKMurphy, Inc. Bootstrapper Breakfast Walnut Creek Jan 25, 2011 Entrepreneurs tend to focus on having a good idea, or on the challenges of developing a new product, or on finding co-founders to

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