The Two Things You Need From Early Customers that Matter More than Cash
As you start to go to market, there are two things to prioritize from early customers that matter more than cash. Feedback and marketing rights.
The feedback matters for obvious reasons. The product is early; customer feedback will help you hew the raw granite of your initial product into shape.
The second may not be so obvious. Every prospect championing a software purchase will be asked by the opponents of the sale and decision-makers: “Who else is using the software?” The more impressive your customer list, the stronger the case your champion can extol. Logos confer credibility.
Software vendors are in the business of selling promotions. And the best way to fight the inertia in sales is to equip your champions. Social proofis one of the strongest influences for buyers and best ways to defeat the preference for buyers to continue as they are. There is safety in conformity.
That’s why logos are worth more than cash. If you negotiate the rights to market some great customer brands, you’ll be able to use them in every sales process, in every press release, in every recruiting conversation. That’s worth much more than cash and larger bookings in the early days.
A great customer logo slide is like a bank account. It compounds its value with time. Great brands attract other great brands. Be sure to invest early in those logos, even at the material expense of bookings.
IoT and Digital Transformation | Strategy, Business Development and Commercialization | Technology Executive Management
6 年Good post - I would add one more key need which is a flexible customer who is eager to get to market and will work with you to get a MVP out that is feature stable as to opposed to full feature complete. If the customer is too demanding, feedback will lead to feature creep that delays the product release and costs you first-mover advantage.
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6 年I love this, thank you! Point #2?is GOLD.
Google Cloud Account Executive | AI Infrastructure & Compute
6 年??????
MOHAMED KHAMI at EQUITY AutoBranch
6 年MOHAMED KHAMIS
Agribusiness technical consultant
6 年Farm sold in Tanzania The Rufiji River is the largest in East Africa and is formed by the confluence of the Kilombero and Luwegu rivers. The Lower Rufiji Valley is its floodplain and runs from Stiegler’s Gorge down to the Indian Ocean. The land throughout the valley is flat and interspersed with oxbow lakes and seasonal riverbeds. The soils are a mixture of sand, silt, loam and clay. Lukuliro Farm has title deeds to 5,506 hectares (13,607 acres) of land in the Lower Rufiji Valley. The deeds are in the form of a Leasehold Title valid for 98 years. There is an additional 10,000 hectares of irrigable local community land adjacent to the farm that the village councils have made available for outgrower or sharecropping schemes. The farm is 3 km south of the Rufiji River, 100 km inland from the sea and 25 km west of the town of Utete. Utete is 225 km from Dar es Salaam, by road. The project area is flat open savannah and bush land, with canopy coverage of less than 10%. The land is ideally suited for the development of large-scale irrigated agriculture for the following reasons: ? There are abundant water resources: the Rufiji River’s mean annual flow rate is 900 cubic meters per second and good quality groundwater lies at a depth of only 5 m. ? The soils are deep, fertile alluvial deposits and are suitable for rice, sugar and tropical fruit. ? The local climate is perfect for fish farming. ? The topography allows for the easy construction of irrigation networks. ? The land is uninhabited and unused, so there will be no adverse socio- economic impact on the local population, nor any political or environmental objection to the project. ? The farm is close to market: 250 km by road to the port of Dar es Salaam. High-resolution aerial photographic imagery and topographic LiDAR elevation mapping is available on request, as are soil reports, pre-feasibility studies and detailed financial models. A full feasibility study will be available from October 2018.