revenue in america: scaling businesses in the us

325M Sharon Park DriveMenlo Park, CA 94025www.visionandexecution.com

MODULE 3

Revenue in AmericaScaling businesses in the US

presented at CCICEMarch 28, 2014

Patrina Mack Managing Partner

© 2003 - 2014 Copyright Vision & Execution

OPTIMIZING YOUR PRODUCT FOR LAUNCH

Patrina Mack, Managing Partner

04/10/2023


04/10/2023

• Describe one of yours – Why did you “need” it?

– Why did you choose it over others?

– How long did it take you to make

your decision to buy?

– What price did you pay?

– What influences affected your buying decision?

– How do you feel owning it?– Would you buy it again?

• Now describe your worst product experience– Answer all of the above + what you did and how you felt

Your Favorite Products

What does this tell you about

designing

products?


04/10/2023

Question for Your Company

Has your team thought ofeverything that your favoriteproduct company thought ofto win you as a customer?


04/10/2023

Finding a Market Worthy of Investment

• Problem– Not defining a sizeable enough market

• Solution– 3 mandatories of market viability

• Large & growing

• Clear customer need & willingness to pay

• Opportunity you can fulfill—defensibly


04/10/2023

• Why would anyone buy this general type of product or service?

• Why will someone buy our product/service?

• Why will we meet our volume and profit goals?

• If this new product was not available, what would someone do instead?– Buy something else?– Make something?– Do nothing?

Solution

What is Your Value Proposition?


04/10/2023

Validate Your Market Opportunity

• Total addressable market size + the segments

• Market & growth trends

• Tech, regulations, environmental trends

• Your “ecosystem” & differentiated value

• Purchasing characteristics/process– By segment

• Most receptive geographic region

• Customers buying expectations– From where / from whom / in what form?

• Target market developmental stage


04/10/2023

Prioritize for Maximum Market Opportunity

Market sizeMarket growthLikelihood to adoptKey features
















Segment 1

Segment 2

Segment 3

Segment 4

Region 1…Channel 1





04/10/2023

Customer Input Matters at Every Stage

Ethnographic research

Concept evaluations

Strategic client requirements

Sales/account management

Support

Demand

validation

Feature

Prioritization/

Trade-offs

Prototype

evaluations

Working

prototype

evaluations

Process

engineering

Usability/

human

factors

Cu

sto

mers

Beta test

Pilot program

User groups

Bug data

Feature

request

button

Customer

satisfactionCONTINUOUS PROCESS OF INDUSTRY RESEARCH, COMPETITIVEANALYSIS, COST / BENEFIT ANALYSIS & METRICS

DELIVERYVISION DEFINE DEVELOP


04/10/2023

Deliver a Superior Customer Experience

• Problem– Not creating value for customers by

failing to deliver the “whole” product

• Solution– Develop the product from customer

need and market demand

• Not just because it’s new technology


04/10/2023

Create a Compelling Customer Experience

• Design for the whole product – Deliver on external customer needs

• Customers• Channels/partners

– Deliver on internal customer needs• Marketing• Development• Manufacturing• Operations• Sales• Finance

Cross-functional

Requirements Create

Compelling Customer

Experiences


04/10/2023

Best Practices: Cross-Functional Teams

• Fully cross-functional team delivers a complete product

– Needs of external customers met

– Needs of “internal customers” met

– Global requirements embedded in initial design

Marketing

Engineering

Finance

Operations/Manufacturing

Prof.Serv.

SalesGlobalTeamLead

Regional GMsBusiness Dev

Partners

Product MarketingCorporate MarketingChannel Marketing

BillingReporting

SLA Management

EngineeringQADocumentationBeta Program

InfrastructureSupportSourcing

Account MgmtRegional Leads


04/10/2023

“Whole” Products Deliver Solutions

What “gaps” in functional considerations do

you have in creating a “whole” product

for your company?


04/10/2023

Pace Development to Adoption• Understand what the

minimum feature set is to gain initial trial

• Understand what the minimum feature set is to gain widespread adoption

• Build a product roadmap

• Get customer agreement with your roadmap

• Understand how to prioritize maintenance vs. Version 2.0

CU

STO

MER

’S R

ATE

OF A

DO

PTIO

N

TIME

= YOUR ABILITY TO DELIVER

= CUSTOMER’S ABILITY TO ABSORB


04/10/2023

Process Has its Place

• Problem– Missed customer expectations– Is late to market– Has cost over-runs

• Solution– Apply a disciplined product development process to

deliver a product or service that:• Satisfies the customer’s entire ownership experience• Is on time• Is on budget


04/10/2023

Market & product strategy vision

Platform strategy

Segmentation strategy

MRDs

Market planProduct

concept proposal / business case

Preliminary technology assessment

Risk analysis

Complete beta test

Complete customer service /support & logistics testing

Implement pre-launch marketing deliverables

Implement pre-launch training deliverables

Production/ distribution plan

Integrated test plan

Systems integration

Alpha testing Beta test plan &

exit criteria Documentation Customer

service & support plan

Manufacturing plan

Launch plan EOL &

migration plan 3rd party

contracts

Ongoing product support

Achieve or exceed program objectives (metrics capture)

Achieve product support / value objectives (customer feedback mechanism)

Execute end-of-life plan

PRD including “glocalization” requirements

Engineering response

Architecture & HL system design

Technology assessment & readiness report

Third-party LOI

VisionDefine

BusinessDefine

ProductDevelopProduct

TestProduct

DeliverProduct

SustainProduct

Announce product

Transition to sustaining duties & disband the product delivery team

Implement post-launch marketing deliverables

Implement post-launch training deliverables

Localize software

Must-Do for Startups

Product Development LifecycleApproval for Development

Approval for Release

ConceptApproval

Approval for EOL

Approval for Beta


04/10/2023

Anticipate Options for Growth

Extend Business

En

rich

Pro

du

ct

CoreProduct


CASE STUDIES – FREQUENT MISTAKES AND LESSONS LEARNED

Scott Trappe, Executive Consultant

04/10/2023


B2B Case Study: Company and Product• ~275 person software firm; started 15+ years ago• Many existing products, designed for and sold to

IT departments in big organizations—banks, insurance, defense contractors, govt. agencies– Most sales are in-country via direct sales force– Some international sales through resellers

• New Product: finds software bugs at any point in the development process, doesn’t need test cases– Technology created at the leading university in the

country, firm invested $$$ to commercialize04/10/2023


Situation Analysis: Competitive Environment

04/10/2023

Global Software Test$32B

ASQ$2.2B

SQAM$412M

Market Size Top Firms by Sales

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.* Apple & Microsoft include this

functionality in their dev tools

*


• Spending on developer tools falling because of Open Source tools

• IT departments are shifting testing $ to cloud-based services

• Development is increasingly for web and mobile apps 04/10/2023

2004

2006

2008

2010

2012

$600

$800

$1,000

C, C++Java VB

JSObj-CPHP

Python

2012 2015

Situation Analysis: Customer Behavior


The Options

A. Don’t enter U.S. Market

B. Be the low-price leader

C. Convince buyers that the product is better

D. None of the Above

04/10/2023


Our Recommendations• Reposition as a security-testing solution

– Explain security implications of existing errors– Add new defect categories– Support web/mobile languages

• Offer as a service– Use security consultants as service providers– Allow users to try in bite-sized pieces– Move towards cloud-hosted offering

04/10/2023


B2C Case Study: Company and Product• ~300 person software firm• Dominates the market for enterprise document

rights management (DRM) in its home country– Products sold via direct sales force– Conventional license (upfront fee, annual maintenance)

• New Product: DRM for consumers– Control access to documents you share in the cloud

(and by “cloud” we mean “Dropbox”)– Subscription fee $10/month (on top of Dropbox fees)– Launched at RSA Data Security Conference in 2013

04/10/2023


Situation Analysis: Competitive Environment

04/10/2023

Yahoo! Flickr

SugarSync

BoxGoogle

Docs

Amazon Cloud Drive

Apple iCloud

ShareFile

Egnyte

Zoho

Hightail (YouSendIt)

Microsoft SkyDrive

Syncplicity

Intralinks VIA

Dropbox for Business

EMCSyncplicity

Citrix ShareFile

Hightail Enterprise(YouSendIt

Workstream)

HomePipe

(TappIn)

GlobalSCAPE TappInAccellion

File Sync

Oracle Ovum

Google Drive

BitTorrent Sync

2003 2004 2005 2007 2008 2010 2011 2012 2013

OfficeDropSymantec

Norton Zone

TIBCO Vault

SkyDrive Pro

SalesForce Files

LogMeInCubby

EMCSyncplicity

IBM Connections

Novell Filr

WatchDox

WatchDox Sync

OpenText Tempo Box

Dropbox


Situation Analysis: Jobs to be DoneSurvey Question: What do you use the cloud for?Share photos and videos with family and friends

Access my e-mail when I travel

Send files too large for e-mail

Store music and movies

Backup my desktop/laptop hard drive

Access files on any device, anywhere, anytime

Collaborate with a distributed team

Electronic Signature / Secure Delivery


What Might be the Problem?

A. Consumers already think their documents are secure

B. Consumers don’t want to pay (95%+ of Dropbox accounts are free)

C. Consumers don’t need DRM services

D. All the above

04/10/2023


Our Conclusions• No paying consumer DRM market exists• Small and medium businesses in some industries

are looking for:– Secure way to get/send documents to clients– Easily collaborate with partners, vendors, customers

securely

• Target one or two specific segments– Focus on collaboration aspects– Make cloud-based (no software to install)

04/10/2023


Takeaways• Understand the current market environment

– Find industry research reports, business stories to understand trends, market size, competitive landscape

– Lurk in forums, chat rooms to find out user needs

• Validate your product concept with potential users– User studies (surveymonkey.com, aytm.com)– Pretotyping

• Segment the market to determine which buyers you can afford to reach profitably (sales channel)

04/10/2023


SCALING SALES AND SUPPORT FOR RAPID ADOPTION

Brian Mellea

04/10/2023


Now let us turn to selling• By now Engineering has created a great product• Marketing told you:

– What to sell– Who to sell to– How to sell it– What to price it at

• So now, it’s easy to sell• Right?

04/10/2023

Wrong!


What I’m going to talk about• Selected lessons from helping companies

sell – Direct – Online

• Not an encyclopedia

04/10/2023


You need answers• To these questions

– Why buy?– Why buy now?– Why buy us?– Why buy more?

• And online and direct sales people trained to answer them!

04/10/2023


Let’s talk about

04/10/2023

B2B sales

B2C sales


B2B sales

04/10/2023

Before

Product Software for IT to increase agility, reduce costs

Problem Customers didn’t believe this large company’s claims

Then

IT stories of “eating the dogfood”.

But a new problem:

Sales couldn’t explain. Sales was embarrassed.

IT was called.

Sales overwhelmed IT!

After

Sales training.

1 to Many

Sales comfortable.

Increased sales.

Company credibility up.

Thought leader.


B2B sales

• What we are finding works in the US– Telling stories

04/10/2023


Let’s talk more about telling stories

04/10/2023

Sales people sell through telling

stories. Stories need to be in the language of the

buyer.


We don’t have any stories

04/10/2023


Selling Playbook

04/10/2023

Playbook Platform

Standard rep trajectoryAccelerated Ramp

from Playbook

Improvement from deliberate practice and

timely coaching and feedback

$ / Rep

# Months

$ pe

r R

ep

+

50%+

Months


B2C Case study

After

Sell fewer features

Sold by phone to school administrators & PTA presidents.

Via PTA tradeshows, principal associations

Results: Reference customers + first sales

04/10/2023

Before

Product Online software that assists parents, schools, and nonprofits to organize volunteer activities. Dozens and dozens of features.

Sales channel

Market through mothers’ groups.Telesales to close.

Reach Via Moms


Lesson• Find the many ways people find out about

products and services like yours• Ways = sales channels• Work to get access

04/10/2023


Try, try, try again

• Continually testing online campaigns

04/10/2023

Go to school online

Go to school online


Invest in web tools• Training in Google

Analytics• Buy the next level up from

Google Analytics– User testing services

• Build website for A/B testing

04/10/2023


Make friends on the web• Analytics give you partial

answers• People will appear

– Reach– Reward– Reciprocate

04/10/2023


SCALING SUPPORT

04/10/2023


Scaling Support

04/10/2023


Scaling Support depends upon Stage

04/10/2023

Online Group Collaboration SW: Just launched. Customers = eager early, vocal adopters

Product New w warts, limited FAQs

Problem You’re so vulnerable. Early customers can love or kill your product

Challenge Companies use engineers. Wrong skill set. Wrong personality.

Better Hire a woman. One who can write documentation.


Scaling Support depends upon Stage

04/10/2023

Consumer digital video camera Stage = widespread customer base. Less techie. Less tolerant. Less patient.

Product 3rd Generation

Problem Scale to a call center. CEO => India

Challenge Too small for vendorsHard to train

Better Staff localThink out of boxProcess, then outsource


Takeaways• B2B

– Tell stories to sell, don’t sell– Train Your Reps

• B2C– Test, test, test– Tools matter– Only with friends on the web can you scale

• Support– Fit with the stage of your customers, not the stage of your company– 1:16– Support is part of your product or service

04/10/2023


In closing…• Key Principles for Scaling Revenue

– Define a large market you can dominate

– Understand what drives your customer to buy and your channel to sell

– Consider the entire “ownership” experience and how emotional the

decision making process is

– Remember good process gets to market faster, on budget, especially when

you focus on the minimal viable feature set

– Remember that sales and support are “product features” and you must

deliver the experience customers expect and need

04/10/2023


How to reach Vision & Execution• Phone: +1 650 233 0256• eMail: [email protected]• Twitter: @visionexecution• Blog: www.visionandexecution.com/blog• For a copy of this presentation visit

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revenue in america: scaling businesses in the us

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copyright vision execution

product solution

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