Presentation given to participants in 2010 Georgia Tech College of Management Business Plan Competition. Focus of presentation was writing the marketing portion of the plan, a good number of the slides are spent on customer development.

1. Developing the Marke1ng Plan
for a New Venture
Lance Weatherby
January 20, 2010

3. My life in logos

14. Enough about me

15. Let’s talk about you

16. But it’s not about you, your
idea, or your technology

17. It’s about the customer

18. So understand & develop
customers

19. Product Development
Concept/ Product Alpha/Beta Launch/1st
Bus. Plan Dev. Test Ship
Customer Development
Customer Customer Customer Company
Discovery Validation Creation Building
Source: hFp://www.slideshare.net/sblank/customer‐development‐at‐startup2startup

20. Discover your customers big
problems and if your
concept solves them

21. Which means you have to
spend Lme talking with
potenLal customers

22. Talking with potenLal
customers not to sell

23. Talking with customers to
understand their unmet
needs

24. Customer Customer Customer Company
Discovery Validation Creation Building
The goal is to develop a repeatable and scalable sales
process with a complete understanding of the sales
cycle
Source: hFp://www.slideshare.net/sblank/customer‐development‐at‐startup2startup

25. But you have to have a
business plan for this
compeLLon

26. And that business plan
needs market and
markeLng stuff

27. Size does not maFer

28. Market size is intuiLve

29. Top Down

30. BoFom up

31. Proper segmentaLon

32. MarkeLng strategy is
thoughts and words

33. A markeLng plan is raLonal
numbers

34. It’s basically the top line
details of a financial plan

35. Nobody is going to believe
your numbers

36. But numbers like these pass the
sniff test
350k 1.5 4.5 15 30

37. MarkeLng is two things

38. Building awareness

39. GeXng customers

40. All you have is viral and
word of mouth

41. Tell me what do in four
words

42. Density maFers

43. Unless you have a really
good reason not to, price at
market

44. Your distribuLon strategy is
you

45. Channel won’t support a
product without demand

46. So

47. Get out of the classroom
and go find some potenLal
customers

48. Lance Weatherby
lance@weatherby.net
blog.weatherby.net
@lance