Devops for Growth

Think of the people you know who had an iPhone 10 years ago, who were the first in your circle of friends to stay in someone’s spare room, via Airbnb, or booked a ride with Uber while others warned against it and used taxis. Representing 2.5% of the population, these are the Innovators. A small segment, but a vital one – they’re engaged, interested, and active.

Innovators are not only eager to try something new, they’re actively seeking out the next “best” thing. They have a problem they are trying to solve – an easier/better/faster way of banking, super that provides them with greater flexibility and visibility, or a way of investing their spare change. They’re constantly seeking – reading, researching, signing-up to be the first to try before there’s even a product on the market. Innovators are the first to know.

A 2015 EY survey of 10,131 digitally active consumers across Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, the U.K. and U.S. identified two key ways to identify Innovators – they’re younger and richer. As published in the Winter 2015 edition of The Journal of Financial Perspectives: FinTech, “…one in every four respondents aged 25 to 34 has used at least two FinTech products in the last six months”. And 21.3% of 34 to 44 year olds responded that they had used at least two Fintech products in the six months before the survey.

This segment is more likely to live in urban areas, and have a greater disposable income, with over 44% of study participants who indicated they used two or more Fintech products earning over US$150,000 p.a., and another 24% earning between US$70,000 and $150,000 p.a.

The Ultimate List of Customer Development Questions

There are 3 types of product features required to develop a product people want to use: Mandatory, Linear and Exciter. A Kano survey helps you find them.

One of the burning questions for startups is how to validate their market assumptions. Have you ever asked yourself why so many products fail to create

As part of our own product development at Delibr, we interviewed over 300 Product Managers to understand how they work and collaborate around feature development, what problems they face, and the many approaches to solving those problems.

The Power of Selling is the perfect textbook to teach students about the proven process of selling. More important, it teaches students how to apply the tenets of selling to how to sell themselves and get the job they want, with the same process professional sales people learn (or brush up) on their own selling skills.

What makes someone successful in sales? Are great sales people born or made? Is there one magic selling process, or does the process change based on the business‚ or the customer? How can the selling process really come alive for students in the classroom? How do students learn how to sell for life, not just for a course? The Power of Selling by Kim Richmond answers these questions and makes the principles of selling come alive.

Kim looks at the topic of selling through a different lens, and provides inspiration and ideas. The Power of Selling provides an exciting and interactive experience for both professors and students through the use of 4 unique elements:

1. Content The content is based on the core selling tenets so instructors will find the familiar principles of selling. In addition, the impact of Sales 2.0 is addressed at every stage including how to use interactive tools such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, and wikis effectively.

2. Selling U: The last section of each chapter is called Selling U. It applies the concepts covered in the chapter to a student's job search. Selling U topics include how to think about yourself as a brand, how to create a powerful cover letter and resume, how to create your personal elevator pitch, how to use networking and informational interviews to get the word out about your brand, how to prepare and dress for an interview, and how to negotiate and accept the right job offer. What makes The Power of Selling different is that Selling U is integrated into every chapter, which makes this text the ultimate guide to selling yourself.

3. Video Resources:Videos are used throughout the book. Additional videos that are not included in the text are available for instructor use. Here are videos that are available:

… Video Ride-alongs — One of the best ways to learn about sales is by going on ride-alongs. So every chapter starts with an exclusive feature called a Video Ride-along. These short videos feature seven different sales professionals — one that starts each chapter. Each one talks about how he or she applies one of the key concepts covered in the chapter in their job. These videos are designed to be ”virtual ride-alongs“ so the students can actually feel as though they are getting insights first hand from selling professionals.

… Over 50 videos are included featuring the sales professionals who are highlighted in the Video Ride-alongs. About half of the videos are used in the textbook. The balance are available for instructor use. Several are included in Video Learning Segments (see below). These videos are excellent resources for use in the classroom, exercises, and assignments.

… Video Learning Segments In addition to the traditional supplements of Instructor Manual, PowerPoints, and Test Bank, there are also Video Learning Segments. These are PowerPoint slides embedded with videos designed to supplement the course PowerPoints and focus on one concept, like an ethical dilemma, pre-call preparation, or effective presentations, how to use email effectively. Each segment includes slides, videos, discussion questions, or exercises.

4. The Power of Selling LinkedIn Group.
This group was created on LinkedIn.com expressly as a resource for the faculty and students who use this textbook. The group includes sales professionals from across the country and from different industries. This is a great tool for faculty and students alike to network, participate in discussions, ask questions, and connect with ”real world“ selling professionals.

Kim Richmond's The Power of Selling is a fresh, interactive, and applied textbook intended for all introductory and sales, selling and salesmanship courses. If you're ready to prepare your ”students of selling“ for all that lies ahead in their professional career—you're ready for this book. Check it out.

In a leanstartup, don't seek publicity too soon. You can, just not yet until you get to product market fit.

Repeatable freelance and consulting work

SaaS, and software more generally, has been stealing work from freelancers since the beginning. Nobody wants to be in the business of reinventing wheels, so if you see a specific type of job that businesses are paying contractors to do over and over again from scratch, there may be an opportunity to build a SaaS solution. This was the method that generated the idea for Storemapper. There was no good plug-and-play solution for a store locator app on the market and several of my own clients asked me to build them one. I could have made something from scratch and sent them a bill for $1,000 – $2,000 each but it was a broad enough need to warrant investigation as a Micro-SaaS. Another thing to look for is a big change in complexity. I did some research into other store locators and found that companies with a store locator would have a relatively simple site, something easily built without a developer on Squarespace, WordPress or Shopify, but the store locator would be a big step change in complexity. So I reasoned that you might have a lot of customers who could launch their entire site without a developer, except for the store locator. Great opportunity.

The best way to sniff out these kinds of opportunities is to actually become a consultant in a particular field and really learn what customers need.

When you’re launching a new product, your first set of users can make or break your project. Here’s how to get these early adopters right.

Building Your Customer Development Plan Cindy Alvarez The Experience is the …

Principles of Marketing teaches the experience and process of actually doing marketing – not just the vocabulary. It carries five dominant themes throughout in order to expose students to marketing in today's environment:

Service dominant logic — This textbook employs the term "offering" instead of the more traditional First "P" — product. That is because consumers don't sacrifice value when alternating between a product and a service. They are evaluating the entire experience, whether they interact with a product, a service, or a combination. So the fundamental focus is providing value throughout the value chain, whether that value chain encompasses a product, service, or both.

Sustainability — Increasingly, companies are interested in the impact they are having on their local community as well as the overall environment. This is often referred to as the "triple bottom line" of financial, social, and environment performance.

Ethics and social responsibility — Following on the sustainability notion is the broader importance of ethics and social responsibility in creating successful organizations. The authors make consistent references to ethical situations throughout chapter coverage, and end of chapter material in most chapters will encompass ethical situations.

Global coverage — the authors deliberately entitled Chapter 1 "What is Marketing?" Whether it is today's price of gasoline, the current U.S. presidential race, or Midwestern U.S. farming, almost every industry and company needs strong global awareness. And today's marketing professionals must understand the world in which they and their companies operate.

Metrics — Firms today have the potential to gather more information than ever before about their current and potential customers. That information gathering can be costly, but it can also be very revealing. With the potential to capture so much more detail about micro transactions, firms should now be more able to answer "well, what this marketing strategy really worth it?" And "what is the marketing ROI?" And finally, "what is this customer or set of customers worth to us over their lifetime?"