Targeted fixed price, contingent Services
for product or service introductions. Learning curve is a big issue in product & service introductions. The knowledge and process used affects the outcomes. Leverage Bruce's experience with over 30 start-ups advised or done, with ideas, techniques gathered from 200 of the Fortune 1000.
Assignments for under $500
(FREE if not satisfied)
Deliverables:
In all cases except as noted, the deliverables include written descriptions
of phone calls conducted and the report and recommendations.
The Fee: $450 (FREE if not satisfied)
Evaluate the value proposition and access to potential customers.
The recommendations will include potential variations of the value
proposition and the likely affect on potential customers. Potential barriers
in the mind of customers and significant pain points will be
described.
The Fee: $450 (FREE if not satisfied)
Evaluate the product and service offering. How proprietary and
effective is it? Competition: from a business and from a technology point of
view, what are the easiest strategies for a potential competitor?
The Fee: $250 (FREE if not satisfied)
A Marketing Plan, part #1: identify the likely costs and identify
methods to use when forecasting.
The Fee: $250 (FREE if not satisfied)
Valuation, for your Company or product line. Estimate the range and
the likely appeal for each of several separate investor audiences
The Fee: $450 (FREE if not satisfied)
Getting attention, part #1. Begin the process to identify subjects
and pain points. Create the initial two competing scripts for an initial
cold contact leading through the end of 60 to 90 seconds on the phone.
The Fee: $450 (FREE if not satisfied)
Getting attention, part #2. Use the
initial contact scripts to complete successful sales phone calls with
three to five live prospects. Write about what is learned and what is
discussed thoroughly for each phone call.
You want measurable results. You want any newly created or improved
process to be cloneable. Working with Exxel will be fun and profitable. Start to
Lower your Startup costs and risks.
Let Exxel provide one of the above as
low cost, no risk proof.
A short phone call?
Do not waste your time. Whether you want
us to listen, or to generate ideas, in the first few minutes of a phone call,
you will see the potential.
Call Bruce at 617-930-0836.
Achieve your milestones. Each service lowers sales and marketing costs
and risks in 2 ways. How?
1. Less Work
Get your milestones accomplished in fewer work weeks. The process used and
the prior experience both make less work possible.
When the Exxel process that we call
the “A&B Split Process” is used, it causes and forces a rapid pace of
progress. When the people doing the work have done similar work before, they
know what to do. When a single person has multiple skill sets, the
inefficiency caused by coordination is reduced and the ability to see and
understand what is working is improved.
2. Lower Compensation.
You can lower the compensation for the launch effort compared to the
market value of the work required. Make some compensation contingent on
achieving a significant early revenue milestone. Another portion of
contingent compensation can be based on a revenue milestone that is much
higher, one that occurs later in time, perhaps 12 or 18 months after launch.
Such contingent compensation aligns the self-interest with the company
owners. It also avoids some expense if the milestones are not met. Assuming
that milestones are met, it pushes some of the expense into a future, a
future where the pain caused by the expense has been reduced.
Please see, assignments for under $500, or $0.
Lower the risk of failure and increase the pace of market adoption in 2
ways.
How?
1. Use a process, the A&B Split process from Exxel
What we descriptively call the A∓B Split Process both causes and
forces a rapid pace of progress. Two versions of each step. One is A and another is B. Use both and see which
works better. The steps in the sequence for launching a product that requires
sales effort are somewhat different from the steps for a consumer product.
For such sales driven products and solutions, for each Title you plan to
contact, the A&B Split process should be used for the steps starting with
initial contact through ongoing involvement. Depending on the product or
service being sold, the process is likely to include advertising messages,
the writing a direct response communication, and scripts and pointers which
cover what should be said during either the initial telephone or face-to-face
sales contact.
Use the A without comparing to an alternate, a B for initial customer contact is a
mistake. No matter how good A turns out to be, a reasonable alternative
almost always has at least a 50 percent chance of doing materially better.
How?
2. Use highly skilled people
A person who has seen many similar circumstances before and who has a wide
range of skills can save you a lot. Mistakes and the less good alternatives
are identified earlier. Often the highly skilled person can see what others
can not see until later, until more work has been done and more time has gone
by.
The team that has people with many similar experiences can accelerate the
learning process, reducing the learning curve.
Use measurement and feedback during the early Learning curve
Reduce the learning curve duration. Get to a better result at the end,
more revenue per dollar spent on sales and marketing. In every launch of a
new company or product there is a high amount of uncertainty.
The total cost and elapsed time to launch a new product or service
offering can vary by at least 300 percent. Will it take 3 months or over 9
months to close initial customers. Cost
can be lower and Revenue can also be higher. The amount of revenue that will
be generated, given a fixed sales and marketing dollar budget for a launch,
can easily vary by 200 percent, like $250,000 or $500,000. The 200%
comparison does not include failure or even the common “limping along” scenario with a few new
accounts but almost no revenue.
No one knows all of the answers.
About the A&B Split process
A good process reveals the answers. The A&B Split process identifies
what works and how well. The number of elements that can be varied is very
large. It includes how product is sold, the pricing, the distribution channels. In many cases, the actual content
of product or service can be varied with the sales impact measured to
determine the impact on revenue and cost.
Iterate almost everything, changing how things are done. Measure what
happens. Prototype marketing materials. Get feedback from experts and from
potential customers. Provide high flexibility early in the process when the
expense levels are low.
Low cost, high-value assignments usually are the right way to start with Exxel
What you want is measurable results. That can be done in small increments.
Efficiency can be very high resulting in effective use of your time and low
cost.
Because we are entrepreneurs and we serve those who do entrepreneurial
work, we take a lot of the risk that normally a client would take.
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