24 Things You Can Learn Reading Lean B2B: Build Products Businesses Want

24 THINGS YOU CAN LEARN READING...

Etienne Garbugli 2x Startup Founder (Flagback & HireVoice) Recognized Usability & UX Research expert 2013 Most-Liked SlideShare Presentation Creator Author of Lean B2B: Build Products Businesses Want

Etienne Garbugli 2x Startup Founder (Flagback & HireVoice) Recognized Usability & UX Research Expert 2013 Most-Liked SlideShare Presentation Creator Author of Lean B2B: Build Products Businesses Want View Full ContentThe Lean B2B Table of Content Chapter 1 — Introduction Chapter 2 — Where I’m Coming From Chapter 3 — The nature of the B2B World Chapter 4  — Where It Starts Chapter 5  — Choosing a Market Chapter 6  — Finding Early Adopters Chapter 7 — Leveraging Domain Credibility & Visibility Chapter 8 — Contacting Early Adopters Chapter 9  — Finding Problems Chapter 10 — Conducting Problem Interviews Chapter 11 — Analyzing the Results Chapter 12 — Finding a Solution Chapter 13 —Creating a Minimum Viable Product  Chapter 14 —Preparing Your Pitch Chapter 15 — Conducting Solution Interviews Chapter 16  — Product-Market Fit Chapter 17  — Common Challenges Chapter 18  — Speeding up Product-Market Validation Chapter 19 — Conclusion

There are 3 reasons why businesses buy ... To increase revenue To decrease costs To increase customer satisfaction 1

Your passion, domain expertise and your ability to build products are the 3 things in your control to reduce the risk of starting up. 2

You can ﬁnd great business ideas right where you work. That’s what 50% of the Inc. 500 Founders did (Source: Amar Bhidé). 3

Alcohol and the telephone are great tools to test your value proposition. You will learn whether your value prop is shareable and can be memorable. 4

VCs, industry bloggers, journalists and market analysts are fast-tracks to understanding markets. They have an horizontal - broad - view of the market. 5

Annual reports can tell you if a company has an early adopter mindset. What can you learn from a ﬁnancial ? 6

Your story - or the story of your founding team - can help get you through the doors of enterprises. Britelynx founder, Pete Lalancette, was a military helicopter pilot for 21 years before starting up. Wouldn’t you be curious to meet him? 7

Competitors often tell you who you should be speaking with. Start here 8

The early adopters that get the new iPhones are not the same people that go and try the new coffee shop. - Brant Cooper, Lean Author Being an early adopter is not a personality type. 9 “

Meeting people in their work environment can sometimes lead to great insights. Interviewing IT professionals, Jason Cohen noticed certain magazines on the desk of his prospects. When his product was ready, he advertised in that magazine to great success. 10

Finding where your prospects gather for pleasure or for work can signiﬁcantly increase your odds of success. Where do IT executives go to network? 11

Proximity to customers is key. Moving in with them can be a great idea. Having development teams at client ofﬁces, helps you discover customer pains, context of use, stakeholders, underlying needs and enterprise reality. 12

In the long run, the people that seek problems out-perform the people that seek solutions. Drs. Jacob Getzels and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi proved this theory by following the career of professional artists for over 2 decades. 13

To win, your solution must be at least 2 times faster, 2 times better and 2 times cheaper than the known alternatives. 14 – Value (Actual or Perception of) = Risk (Perception of) Implementation Score

... though rarely perceived as a competitor, Excel is almost always an actual competitor for software startups. “ - Joshua Porter, HubSpot Director of UX If you can't beat the Excel solution, your product will never be a success. 15

Frequency is about the worst way to pick a problem to address. Cables have been getting tangled up all over the world for decades – it’s a very common problem — but very few people would pay to have that pain removed. 16

To keep your focus, sometimes it’s best to turn down paying customers. You won’t convince large enterprises to sign with you if all your customers are tech startups. 17

You can generate revenue and still fail. If revenue is the ﬁrst form of validation in B2B, (user) engagement is the ultimate form. 18

93% of products that ultimately became successful started off in the wrong direction. “ - Clayton Christensen, Innovation Author Company pivots are a lot more common than people would think. 19

The average age of successful B2B founders is 40. 20 Not 19, 25, 28 or 32 (Source: Vivek Wadhwa).

The average number of attempts needed to make a sale is eight to ten. If you’re trying to reach C-level executives it's 12 to 14. 21 Persistence is key.

Nobody ever got ﬁred for buying IBM... “ 22

Nobody ever got ﬁred for buying IBM... “ ...said the IBM marketing team 22

The CIA has its own investment fund. In-Q-Tel is slowly becoming the stamp of approval for technologies secure enough for government agencies. 23

You should never optimize before product-market ﬁt. With time on your side, everything can be improved. 24

«This is a must read for every B2B entrepreneur, SaaS creator or consultant and business school student. It's the kind of book you don't read once, you go back to it on a regular basis. » - Carmen Gerea, CEO & Co-founder, UsabilityChefs «Treat this book like a map to show you where you are and a compass to show you the direction. I wish I could have read it 2 or 3 years ago. » – Jonathan Gebauer, Founder, exploreB2B « Lean B2B is ﬁlled with rock-solid advice for technology entrepreneurs who want a rapid-growth trajectory. Read it to increase your certainty and your success rate. » - Jill Konrath, Author of AGILE SELLING and Selling to Big Companies «The book I read of which I have learned the most. » - Etienne Thouin, Founder and CTO, SQLNext Software «This book is essential reading for would-be entrepreneurs who face the daunting task of entering B2B markets. » – Paul Gillin, Co-Author, Social Marketing to the Business Customer Thousands of innovators around the world use LEAN B2B @egarbugli /egarbugli Read the Lean B2B Blog Étienne Garbugli: