founders institute_ startup strategies for finding and nurturing your first customers

T.A. McCann –Strategies for market and customer research

Founders Institute, Seattle, 3/19/3012

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• Customer research vs. market research• Know your customers• Find and nurture the new influencers• Build a tribe

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Build a map toward success

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A valuable target customer• Business professional• Places high value of relationships (>8/10)• Has significant (>50%) of key relationships outside

company• >5 meetings/week with outside people (more/new is

better)• Uses technology to gain information advantage• Actively builds and manages his network

• Pays monthly information service fees (mobile, CRM, wiki, contact manager… (more is better)

• Roles include (execs, sales, recruiter, PR, journalists, lawyers…)

• Influencer of others and/or small teams• Technical, early but not bleeding edge adopter

• Often fits in GTD category as well• Reads books like “never eat alone” or “4 hour work

week”• Attends “networking” events or activities

People like this include;T.A.BradBuzzKendallBrandtMiles Austin Dave Thomas (WSGR)

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Use a survey to capture and scale

Gist survey – with over 6500 responses - http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZTH5BJR

Kevin Spidel

Managing DirectorPatriot Strategieshttp://patriotstrategies.comWashington, DC, USA5300 contacts, 1279 companies

"I am the Managing Director of an international PR firm and am very active on the social web. Gist allows me to cut through the noise and manage my contacts directly. I am able to monitor what matters... the relationship."

Map real people <--> personas

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Leverage your network to find more

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Copy the leaders (for some stuff)

UsersPositioningUser/market dataMarketingValueFeature priorityKey thought leaders

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Find your market-space/competition

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Work backwards from the acquisition

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My post with a process - http://tamccann.com/finding-the-right-beta-users/Tim Ferris/Noah Kagan - http://twurl.nl/vquqtg

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http://tamccann.com/every-journey-begins-with-a-few-tiny-steps/

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Send regular status (2 weeks)

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Make someone else the champion

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Track and manage your influencers

Go make something great!T.A. McCann

tam@gist.comwww.gist.com/tamccann