Force Concentration – Get your first customer first

By Scott Sambucci | May 24, 2013

“Force Concentration is the practice of concentrating a military force, so as to bring to bear such overwhelming force against a portion of an enemy force that the disparity between the two forces alone acts as a force multiplier, in favor of the concentrated forces.”

Whether you’re a startup or an establish company, when you’re selling to your prospects remember that at any one moment, you’re not looking for 1000 customers to pay you $50,000 each. You need to find the next (or first!) customer. Then the next. Then the next. Ash Maurya refers to a similar concept in his “10x Product Launch” post.

For startups…
It’s vital to establish a sales model framework to understand how and why you are gaining each customer. Then you can begin looking for trends in how you acquired each customer. A few questions to ask yourself:

• How did I find this client? Was this a warm introduction, a conference lead, at a Meetup Group?
• What is the actual contract amount compared to my initial estimate? Did I sell 2 licenses instead of 10? Is the annual subscription set at $25,000/year instead of the $50,000 I projected?
• How long did we spend in each stage of the sale (i.e. Needs Analysis, Evaluation of Option, Resolution of Concerns, and Implementation)? Were there any stalls in the process? How did I recover from them?
• Who was the main driver at the client that pushed the sale through?

Each of these questions (and many, many more) will help you local trends that you can use to your advantage for the next client.

Related Post: Is your “Differentiator” critical to the decision?
Related Post: Plan Your Sales Strategy

For established companies…

Look for signals that your the purchasing process in your target markets is changing.

• Why was the CTO more involved with this sale that other existing clients?
• What budgetary constraints emerged?
• Which competitors were in the mix during the decision process? Who did we unseat?
• How long did we spend in each stage of the sale (i.e. Needs Analysis, Evaluation of Option, Resolution of Concerns, and Implementation)? Were there any stalls in the process? How did I recover from them?
• Who was the main driver at the client that pushed the sale through?

Validating your sales model

…is crucial to proving your company’s survivability. And it starts with the next customer.

(“Force concentration” definition sourced from Wikipedia)