This is the most critical and heart-breaking part of acquiring customers. It can sap even the most persistent. But there is no alternative if you want to convert your qualified lead to an invoice. In the first place, consider yourself lucky you have a set of qualified leads. Most start-ups do not enjoy that luxury. […]
Lead Generation Strategies for Start-ups
Being a young enterprise, you have a product and you have your first set of paying customers. Now the challenge is to take your product to market, generate volumes and gain market share. What are the strategies and plans that you need to adopt to generate a list of prospective customers whom you could pitch […]
Should start-ups pay for Mentoring or Advisory services?
This has been a much debated point in various forums and is a question that plagues start-ups all over the world. Having taken part in numerous such discussions and understood different points of view, I felt that this would be a topic that would interest first-time entrepreneurs in India. So, should a start-up pay for […]
Finding ‘Product-to-Market Fit’ starts at ideation
In the course of interacting with so many start-ups I have found one common factor. Problem with articulating the problem statement. If you have understood the problem completely then defining it in two sentences should not be a problem at all. But therein lies the problem! A problem is a problem only if it is […]
For Start-ups Processes are critical for growth
You have got your first set of paying customers and have validated all your assumptions and now feel you would like to initiate actions for serious go-to-market. Every young enterprise looks forward to this day when they would be able to scale and grow their revenues. The entire focus is on revenues. But do you […]
Cold-calling is a necessity for start-ups. But how do you go about it?
Having worked hard to get that MVP (Minimum Value Product) in place, most start-ups struggle with getting those first set of reference customers that would help them validate their assumptions and scale their business. Most of the first-time entrepreneurs have not done any selling their entire life and are now expected to go out there […]
SWOT Analysis – Importance and Need
For those who are not aware of SWOT, it stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat and an analysis of all these factors is done for any new product, service or company. I have come across many business plans without a SWOT analysis. People probably underestimate the power of such an analysis. A good SWOT […]
Blogging helps to generate traffic for your site
Having built a great website, how do you get traffic to your site? It is one thing to have product or service relevant content, but what would be found more interesting is regularly updated content relevant to the product, industry or target groups that you wish to connect with. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one […]
Customer Retention Strategy
As a start-up CEO, it is important that you build this strategy right at the outset, because this is a smart way of growing your business instead of just adding new customers. Ofcourse, getting new customers is critical to your business growth because it ensures a bigger market share and more endorsements for your product. […]
Building a Scalable Sales Process
To ensure a predictable business plan it is important to have a repeatable and scalable sales process in place. Thereafter, increasing revenues as per the business plan would only mean increasing the sales team and the geographies that you intend to address. Once the sales process is in place, the sales team would only need […]