Ask your potential customers what they want BEFORE you build it...
930718
Good marketing ideas.  Want to know what your future customers want to buy?  Just ask them.  Some good, straight-forward ideas of how to do that.
3017108
This was recommended to me during an webinar on job hunting.

Let me save you 16 bucks. Get business cards. Give them out to everyone, ask for them in return and make a database. Follow-up with emails or letters. Go everywhere and look for people who look like they will talk to you or are wallflowers and get them involved. Don't just ask "what can you do for me?" Go to every networking-type event you can.

That's it, really. OK, he goes a bit more in-depth, but honestly, this could have been a long article in Business Week. Take out the 5th through 23rd mentions of how you should exchange business cards and that would probably cut it down enough. Seriously, I think he must own stock in a printing company.
2848635
Great advice for a first time entrepreneur to help get focused on what matters.  I especially like the 3 month increments and to get as much early feedback ("socialize your idea") before spending any money or time, i.e. don't need to pivot if you can build what the customer wants and values the first time.
2536189
Exponential growth is real. Why can't you double your profits? Why can you lower your customer acquisition by 100%? Read Perry's book and take immediate action when you discover a nugget from his teachings... How high is high? How low is low? What's possible? Lets try that...and test it, and try and test and try and test. Enjoy
3131721
Great for people who look for a guideline to map your business or future business you are willing to start a new business.
4072188
Getting a product to market in a year may (note MAY) be possible if a bunch of things go right. This makes several presumptions that have to fall in line exactly right. For instance some products (like in the medical field) take longer than a year to go through the approval cycle. Electronics have to have FCC testing, perhaps CSA (Canada), all of which takes time. Plastic parts may have to have a mold made, that takes time, and if it isn't right the first time, well you get the idea.

What Mr. Debelak says is that if you start from day one with the right product, use some of the new techniques he talks about (outsourcing the production to a contract manufacturer for instance), then if all the gods are smiling at you, maybe you can do it in a year.

Ignoring his one year time frame, his book is right on the money in a lot of areas. His practical advice on patents is dead right, they may or may not be of value to your particular venture.

His comments on financing are excellent, but here you're going to need a good bit of luck. There are a lot of people looking for financing.

In fact, everything about starting a new product require a good bit of luck. Just remember it's been done before, and it will be done again. Here are a good set of guidelines to get you started.
1038071
Ultimate Guide to Platform Building by Wendy Keller. I found this to be a very informative book. I suspect I will be reading it again as I build my platform and need the specific instructions.
Some of the highlights I want to share are:
* Building your customer avatar  Some of the best information I have read on building my avatar. I literally used the information while in the chapter to create her. This information is critical since you can use it when you decide where to spend your advertising dollars. In addition, your material will be better and more personal when you know who you are communicating with.
* Using analytics to determine customer acquisition costs  This is a section that I think many of us forget to do. It is critical when starting a new venture to be cost conscious. Understanding who your customer is and where they are, can help with decreasing your cost to convert them to customers.
* Spying on the competition- Really a fancy way to research your competition to see what works well for them and what you can do better. You can also find your audience through theirs.
* Defining your Unique Selling Position (USP)- Wendy shares tips on how to determine your USP.
* Give things away for free to engage the Rule of Reciprocity- interesting discussion on the psychological side of reciprocity.
I recommend the book especially if you are new to this type of promotion. Wendy shares a wide range of days so I am confident that some of the would work for almost every idea/product/service.

I received this book from Netgalley.  I was not required to write a positive review.
You can see my full review at More Than a Review dot com where I rate the level of sex, violence, language and drug/alcohol use in books.
1951820
if the product was this tiny you should post it or tell the customer.not post it as a large product.that is miss leading to the consumer.in the long run it will hurt your industry as a hold.small things bring down big things.think think think
2699531
Great concepts for anyone starting a business or in a position to influence one.  What I liked the most is the fact that knowing your "why" in a company helps polarize your potential customers.  This should be every sales and marketing organizations dream.  It allows you to focus on selling and marketing to only those customers who align with your products and or services.  Very simple concepts, but putting them into practice is the real challenge facing companies, especially if they've been operating in the "what" space for many years already.
1505572
In IT Consulting, we are often specialists in a particular discipline or technology, but rather unfocused or agnostic with respect to industry or vertical market. When developing a Marketing Plan, it's critical to identify who your target market is. To that end, I've been examining my list of current and past projects here&nbsp;. As far as I can tell, they have absolutely nothing in common, aside from the fact that I was involved. They span industries, sizes, geographic locations, business models, and technologies used. Many of them are no longer in business. Is examining past successes a poor approach in determining your target market for future growth? How can you focus on a target market narrowly enough to effectively reach your audience, but not at the expense of other opportunities?
2731324
I'm reading Kristin Zhivago's excellent Roadmap to Revenue. Simple ideas, easy to read, but so very important! She maps out a clear method for marketing and sales leaders to really understand what customers want... by interviewing them. Zhivago explains that we should focus more on how customers buy (the buying process) than how we want to sell (the selling process). Sounds simple, right? But how come so many companies fail to do it.

In a way, Zhivago's advice is simple. Call `em and talk to `em. Why is it that product managers and marketing managers seem so reluctant to talk to customers? Zhivago's advice is easy to follow--you just have to make the decision to do it. Happily, she explains the process step-by-step.

So forget about social media marketing and the latest sales techniques. The first step in marketing and sales is knowing your customers. Get the basics right before you worry about anything else.

Strongly recommended!
2536763
Most programmers at some point think they have something they've built that, with a little luck and hard work, can be the next Visicalc of the computer world.  In reality, there's a lot more that goes into it than that.  Rocky Smolin talks about that process in the book From Program to Product: Turning Your Code into a Saleable Product.  You'll know some of the stuff already, but it will keep you from making some other mistakes that could keep you from getting all you could from your brainchild.

Contents:
Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?; So What Do I Do First?; The Program - From The Outside Looking In; The Price of Success; Legal Matters; Some Financial Considerations; Sample Software Licence; Index

Smolin has a couple of different product offerings that he's taken from idea to saleable product.  He uses that experience to talk about the perils, pitfalls, and payoffs of selling your work to others.  Much of what he covers is how to take a step back and actually plan the product.  This ideally should be done *before* you build it, but you may already have the program built and working for the original intended purpose.  He shows how it's best to have that architecture and analysis done before you actually release it, as it will give you the foundation you need to create something that is solid and doesn't start breaking down under the strain of multiple customers.  Probably the best information is on licensing and other legal issues (like escrow).  We may be good at slinging code, but we're not all that hot at making sure the legal groundwork is done.  Without it, you may find yourself giving up all your hard-earned profits to lawyers and disgruntled customers.  Worth reading and considering before you make the mistakes.

There are a couple of nits I have with the book itself.  Smolin is mainly an Access/SQL Server developer, so pretty much all the examples, interviews, and colleages mentioned in the book hail from that software niche.  That doesn't make the core information any less valuable, but it does tend to get a bit old having all the examples showing the same type of software technology.  Also, I'm not sure the interviews at the end of each chapter work as well as they could.  They are nearly verbatim transcripts, so you have too many sequences of answers consisting of single word "yes" and "no"s.  I realize that gives you the realism of the interview, but it also reads in an awkward fashion.  I think I would have chosen clean up that area a bit more.

This book is worth reading if you plan to go down the independent software vendor route.  It'll save you the hassles of repeating the common mistakes that nearly everyone ends up making.
3938725
"Nothing matters more than selling," says the author. "Many first-time entrepreneurs have the impression that they are doing things in a logical order when they look for the perfect office space, have logos designed, and order a lot of inventory. The reality is they are wasting valuable resources on secondary and tertiary endeavors. If no one is going to buy what you want to sell, you've just wasted a bunch of money on a business that will never be."

I see this when a client comes to me and has spent most of his small budget on Web site design and left the important thing, the sales message, for least --- just to fill in the beautiful design. They've spent their money on the least important and have no money left for the most important. This book addresses just these issues.

In this new book Masterson gives a three-step process that entrepreneurs should follow in order to have a successful business. Unfortunately, most do not. I've seen this first hand in my own consulting business. Entrepreneurs tend to put their values and their money on all the wrong things --- and this leads to certain failure.

Here are the steps according to Masterson:

Step one: Get the product ready enough to sell, but don't worry about perfecting it. Step two: Sell it. Step three: If it sells, make it better. While this all sounds fairly easy, it's not.

"Selling can be terrifying," Masterson says. "It can be tough, gritty, unglamorous work. But when you make that first big sale, you realize it's also exhilarating. And like it or not, you probably won't become a successful entrepreneur until you can sell your product or service in your sleep."

When your business is new, you should begin to build a base of customers or clients --- that means you have to sell. Online, that would mean you have to have a powerful sales message on your Web site and in all of your online advertising.

Successful entrepreneurs should (and generally do) spend most of their time --- especially in the beginning --- on selling. Most are very bad at it.

"As the business grows out of its infancy--as it goes beyond the million-dollar revenue mark by selling many more products through many more channels--you can let other people do most of the selling," says the author.

"But by establishing your marketing credentials during the first stage, when the selling secrets of your business are still unknown, you will gain a deep understanding of your business that will serve you well for the rest of your career."

The author writes in an engaging style. This material should help those starting their own business and even those already in business. I see so many mistakes that entrepreneurs make and they tend to be the same things all the time.

If you can avoid those mistakes, you can quickly leap over everyone else and become successful.
4160119
So many great points. #FESM Be yourself, there is no need to try to impress or wait until youve perfected. Use questions to determine peoples needs and lead them to a solution. 80% of success is showing up. They take you through every process. Love it!
1300504
I was able to read through this in a couple of hours.  Josh outlines a system that has worked for him using LinkedIn and Facebook to create groups, position yourself as a leader among the prospects you're trying to connect with and leverage that to get appointments.  He's pretty up front about that fact that it's not something you do once and forget it, it requires and ongoing effort, but if you're willing to make the commitment and put in the effort, it should be effective.  Aside from that, I'm not sure this will work for everyone, but most can pull something out of this that can help them move their sales or business efforts forward.
1553840
Anyone looking to start a business needs to read this. It takes a great deal of courage to start your own business, it is equally important to know what type of Entrepreneur you are. Just because you are a good plumber/landscaper/carpenter... does not mean you will be a good business person. Get to know your strengths so that you may use them to grow your business.
4507598
Are you entrepreneurial material? It's best to find out before you invest your money. Your business is nothing more than a distinct reflection of who you are.

As a Master Trainer for the United Nations Entrepreneurship Capacity Building Program, I can vouch for the importance of a mindset change from being a technician, a task-doer so to speak, to providing results. Having technical capacity is not the problem; making your business a success is. That's where the managerial and entrepreneurial aspects of a business play a part.

Let me give you an example: Having delivered more than ten thousand hours of training in several countries, I can affirm that the first challenge is in setting goals that give long-term vision and short-term motivation. For many people, the urge to jump right to action even before they set goals is strong, but as Yogi Berra used to say, If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else. In the book, Gerber quotes the book of survival by Anthony Greenbank who says, to live through an impossible situation, you don't need the reflexes of a Grand Prix driver, or the muscles of a Hercules, the mind of an Einstein. You simply need to know what to do.

Don't think you will be reading a how-to type of book. Far from it. This book has a plethora of sharp insights for inspiration to set your attitude straight and begin producing results! You will understand that when you know the difference between working in your business versus working on their business, i.e., making your business grow.

I highly recommend this book because instead of continue looking at your business as a one-off operation, you will see it a prototype for a large number of franchises you may add later on. Such simple mindset change will put you to work in the business not only as a technician but also as a manager (putting systems and controls in place) and, above all, as an entrepreneur (having a vision of how the business can create sustainable added value for all key stakeholders).