Workshop: Enterprise Selling for the Lean Startup: How to Find Customers & Talk to Them

By Scott Sambucci | March 4, 2013

When: Wednesday, March 6; 5:30-8:45pm

Where: Runway San Francisco @ 1355 Market Street, Suite 488, San Francisco, CA

Why: Hosted by the Lean Startup Circle | (This will be version 3.0 of this workshop)

To test a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), you need customers. And Customer Development means you need to know the a few basic sales skills. This workshop focuses on understanding the customer pain (Customer Discovery) and then showing them you can solve it (Customer Validation).

In this 3-hour activity-based workshop (hands on, not just a lecture) led by Scott Sambucci, you’ll first learn an effective method for finding potential customers (salespeople call this “prospecting”), then learn what to say and how to say it to your potential customers (a.k.a “making sales calls”). These first customers enable you to validate your product idea and build your business model.

By employing a few simple principles and developing a structure for yourCustomer Discovery calls, you’ll accelerate your learning. Work smarter, not harder.

We’ll start by learning:

• How to research referrals before you call them;
• How to identify new potential customers;
• How begin Customer Segmentation (i.e. “Personas”)
• How to maximize your time at conferences & industry events.

Then, we’ll build a plan for your sales process so you can:

• Convert your potential customers into paying customers;
• Track your sales conversion metrics (i.e.: “AARRR” from Dave McClure and the “Funnel Matrix”);
• Optimize your Product-Market development.

Prep work: To help you get the most out of the work, bring with you (if available):
2-3 referrals or companies that you think are targets for your product under development
A few ideas of how you plan to locate more prospective customers. Are you setting up a web lead form? Will you do outbound calling? Do you plan to work through your personal network and referrals only?