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A webinar for the National Council for Entrepreneurial Tech TransferUnderstanding Efficiency and Effectiveness"You win some, you lose some, you wreck some" Dale EarnhardtPushing through paralysis by analysis to get better results.
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www.Planphoria.com
5 Rules for Effective MarketingDick Davies
Marketing for Entrepreneurs National Council of Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer
www.ncet2.orgJanuary 27, 2009
Segment 3
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I Was Asked To Cover The Basics
• Who is the customer?• What is the need?• What is the size of your market?• Qualify, Present, and Close• You know, the usual stuff
Efficient…Or…Effective?
“I speak BASIC to clients, 1-2-3 to management, and mumble to myself” Anonymous
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What The “Usual Stuff” Means
• A top down, “inside the office” approach• Advantages to this approach
– Google for 30 minutes, cut and paste, done.– Your research strengthens your hypothesis– Generates scads of facts– It is efficient
• Efficient = Feels Good!
"You can observe a lot just by watching." Yogi Berra
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Do We Really Want the “Usual”?
• Disadvantages to this approach– What you find is what you were looking for– Ultimately pretty useless– May be efficient, but rarely effective
• Effective = Money!• You like Money don’t you?
• If you already knew the answers, why were you looking?
“If you think it's going to rain, it will.” Clint Eastwood
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Be Effective
•Take a bottom up, “outside the office” approach•This is awkward and uncomfortable
– You don’t know what you are going to do– You don’t know what you are going to find– You don’t know how long it is going to take– You don’t know what you don’t know
“Experimental confirmation of a prediction is merely a measurement. An experiment disproving a prediction is a discovery.” - Enrico Fermi
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Rule # 1
• If you are going to start a business, have a paying customer
“The customer is in charge of the new world disorder.” - Dieter Huckestein, Wired
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Customers Are A Huge Asset
• Customer opinions define the need, the market, and the solution
• Customers will tell you what they will buy• Note what they say in the meeting• Put your notes on stationery to make them look
impressive, then show the page to the customer and ask for their improvements
• This may be the first time they see what they want in writing
“Learning from customers is a practice. We get better the more we do it.” Dick Davies
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No Customers?
•Rule #2 – If you don’t have a paying customer (or enough
paying customers), go to 20 meetings a month until you have them
– The best way to find a market for a new business or technology, revitalize a sales territory, or learn how to sell, is getting face to face with other people 20 times a month
“It’s a fallacy of academic market theory that information is available equally.” Bill Van Dyke
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Meetings• Rule #3 – What is a meeting?
– Spend time before every meeting deciding what you want to accomplish
– Create a one page document explaining your offer– Ask their opinion of the document, note their answers
• Send them your notes of what you heard• They will often modify your notes. That is good!
– How long should the meeting last?• As long as it takes
– Leave a clean copy of your document with the customer, you get their notes
– This is an effective way to “Qualify, Present, and Close”“Standards should be discovered, not decreed.” Computer scientist explaining why
TCP/IP crushed OIS in “Where Wizards Stay Up Late - Origins of the Internet”
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What If They Want Something?
• Rule # 4 - Figuring capacity and cost– An efficient top down approach
• “There are X billion people in China, if Y percent buy our service for Z cents, WE ARE RICH! YAHOO!”
• Not realistic. That imaginary model usually buys something else– An effective bottom up approach
• Last time took J hours• Based on differences, this should take K hours• It will take a total of L hours to sell the customer• It will take M hours to install and integrate the product• We need N value per hour• Competitors will supply the same thing for $250,000
– Sooner or later you have the right data to make your model. Repeat until you have an answer you can use.
“If it’s not written down, it doesn’t exist.” - Doc Fails, Fails Management Institute
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Understanding Models
• Rule #5 – A Model is a Simplified Representation of Reality– Use your model as long as it helps you
understand your situation – Rebuild your model when it no longer works – Try not to confuse your model with reality
“You win some, lose some, and wreck some.” Dale Earnhardt 10
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Thank [email protected]
“No matter how hard you do the wrong thing, it never quite works” Ted Long
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It’s Your Choice…Which Will You Choose?
Efficient?...Or…Effective?
