Sinead Macmanus provides tips on generating sales and growth for startups. The document discusses 4 key areas needed to sell: 1) A defined product people want, 2) A revenue model, 3) A pipeline of customers, and 4) A sales process to convert leads to customers. For acquiring customers, the document recommends both paid strategies like search advertising, and unpaid strategies like content marketing, guest blogging, email marketing, and doing things that don't scale like manually recruiting early users. The importance of testing hypotheses with a minimum viable product and analyzing conversion funnels is also emphasized.

1. @sineadmacmanus
Generating Sales
& Growth
CityStarters
8th November
2016

2. About me
@sineadmacmanus

3. 11th October: Understanding your market and defining
your users
18th October: Developing a prototype
25th October: Building a business model
1st November: Creating an awesome brand
@sineadmacmanus
So far ...

4. @sineadmacmanus
What do you need to sell?

5. 1. A defined product / service that
people want
2. A revenue model
3. A pipeline of customers / leads
4. A conversion / sales process
@sineadmacmanus
What do you need to sell?

6. 1. A product people want #1

7. 1. A product people want #1

8. The importance of Customer Development

9. Do the Lean Start-up .... but

10. Do the Lean Start-up .... but
A Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
is designed not just to answer
product design or technical
questions. Its goal is to test
fundamental business
hypotheses.

11. Over to you ...
What are some ways of
testing an MVP without
writing any code?

12. Best MVP? Sell something!!!!

13. @sineadmacmanus
Case study #1:
http://hackajob.co/

14. @sineadmacmanus
Case study #2:
https://www.overleaf.com

15. @sineadmacmanus
Case study #3:
https://kano.me

16. @sineadmacmanus
Case study #4:
https://crew.co

17. 2. Start-up Revenue Models
A revenue model is a framework
for generating revenues. It
identifies which revenue source to
pursue, what value to offer, how to
price the value, and who pays for
the value.

18. Single Price revenue model

19. Commission-based revenue model

20. Subscription-based revenue model: SaaS

21. Ad or affiliate revenue model

22. Over to you ...
What revenue model (s)
does your idea lend itself
to?

23. “Most businesses actually get zero
distribution channels to work. Poor
distribution—not product—is the
number one cause of failure.”
Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal
3. Pipeline of customers / leads

24. “Many entrepreneurs who build great products
simply don’t have a good distribution strategy. Even
worse is when they insist that they don’t need one, or
call no distribution strategy a ‘viral marketing
strategy’.
Marc Andreessen, Andreessen Horowitz
3. Pipeline of customers / leads

25. Cost of acquiring a customer

26. “Early in a startup you need to
acquire your customers for free.
Later on, you can spend on
customer acquisition.”
Fred Wilson, Union Square
Ventures
Customer Acquisition Cost

27. 1. B2C - Business to Consumer
2. B2B - Business to Business
B2C v B2B company?

28. Viral Marketing / Network effects

29. Referrals

30. Affiliates

31. Search Engine Optimization

32. Content Marketing
For example, UnBounce:
http://unbounce.com/conversion-rate-optimizati
on/5-post-conversion-strategies-to-increase-cu
stomer-lifetime-value/
Free ebook 101 Landing Page Optimization Tips
5,000 mailing list BEFORE launching

33. Guest Blogging

34. Blogger Outreach
Read anything by Noah Kagan
http://okdork.com/okdork-virgin-guide/

35. Email Marketing

36. Paid Search /PPC

37. Paid Search /PPC
Click-through rate (CTR) is the number of clicks
that your ad receives divided by the number of
times your ad is shown expressed as a
percentage.
Cost per Acquisition (CPA) is the amount it costs
to acquire a customer.
Test:
● Keywords especially long tail
● Ad copy
● Targeting of your ad
● Cost per click
● Landing pages

38. Social Advertising

39. Product as Marketing
https://crew.co/backstage/blog/how-side-projects-saved-our-startup/

40. PressPress and PR

41. PressSpeaking at events

42. “One of the most common types of advice we give at
Y Combinator is to do things that don't scale. A lot of
would-be founders believe that startups either take
off or don't.
Actually startups take off because the founders
make them take off. There may be a handful that
just grew by themselves, but usually it takes some
sort of push to get them going. The most common
unscalable thing founders have to do at the start is
to recruit users manually. Nearly all startups have to.
You can't wait for users to come to you. You have to
go out and get them.”
Paul Graham, Y Combinator
Do things that don’t scale

43. Do things that don’t scale

44. 4a. Converting pipeline into customers
https://moz.com/
blog

45. Exercise: Analyse the funnel for
Geckoboard
https://www.geckoboard.com

46. 4b. Business / direct sales

47. Sales tools
1. LinkedIn, Google search
2. Networking events / Business cards
a. Always ask for theirs
b. Email next day & LinkedIn
c. Use Canned Responses in Gmail
3. Pipeline tools - Excel, Pipedrive, Podio
a. Numbers matter
b. Follow up matters
4. Listening skills
5. Persistence!

48. Lastly, importance of team

49. Questions?

50. sinead@healthfoundry.org
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@sineadmacmanus
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