Success U — Business Model Key Questions

About 110 Series A Entrepreneurs have formed into a collaborative through Montgomery & Associates Law Firm. A few of us industry experts are doing “faculty sessions” where we teach the essentials with the idea that quick, fast bursts of what really matters will help short-cut the learning curve and accelerate success. So a few weeks ago, I spoke at what is now called SuccessU (name is under construction) regarding Business Models, and the following are the video clips and notes from the talk. A PDF is available at the bottom of this entry.

Part 1:

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Offer: “Are you solving an Aspirin Problem”
What compelling problem does your product solve for them? (We’re talking about a problem that actually causes pain, not a mild annoyance.)

• Do they know they have the problem, and do they care? (The tech industry is wonderful at retrofitting imaginary problems to features that engineers wanted to build anyway.)
• Seriously, do customers really care? Enough to spend money on a solution?
• Does your product, need an ecosystem to, solve that problem?

Competitive Differentiation: “what are you doing that can’t be copied?”
This could be operational excellence, customer intimacy, innovation / rate of, ecosystem etc.

• What is it?
• What could be the leading indicators that the market is changing?

Customer / Market: “Who is your customer, not?”
Who, specifically, is the customer for this product? (Note: “young people” does not count as a target market, neither does “professionals.” Be specific about their lives and needs.)

• If you are not repulsing somebody, you’re not doing a good job

Part 2:

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Pricing / Financial Model: “Do you have a realistic market structure?”
What is the more economical blend of sales and marketing resources to tackle each stage of buying process

• Has this model been created or are you doing it for the first time?
• What scale does Revenue generation need to reach? Are you investing enough to get there?
• Have you realistically looked at what is the right price points, and where price plays in the consideration process?

Go to Market: “Will product flow to market easily?”
What is the unique price or value we can derive?

• Do we have the right value proposition in mind on what problem it solves?
• Is this a new market, an existing market, and so what do are the requirements of investment in awareness, consideration, purchase
• What are the right channel partners for this product? Have I got a motivated channel? If not, what do I need to do to fix it?
• What are campaigns, strategies, tactics that will generate interest and leads?
• Am I doing effective (high ROI) campaigns? What’s my cost per lead?
• Am I generating enough leads for sales? How long is the sales cycle to support the pipeline?
• Do we have a right share of voice in the market?
• Am I enabling viral marketing?
• Using web 2.0 methods?

Delivery: “Do I have the right skills on the team to manage what I need to do in-house vs. outsource?”

• Do I know what to stop doing to do what I need to do well.
• Have I found a way to align sales compensation, team compensation to create focus

Success U — Business Model Key Questions