It’s All About Outcomes
TLDR: Startups don’t have the luxury of infinite time, money, talent. Outcomes matter, but, quickness to outcomes also matters. There is a big opportunity cost to every initiative.
“Doesn’t their product team do that?”- was the incredulous response of my friend at Google when I told him I’m helping a young Indian startup founder get product and market feedback from leaders in her target market in Malaysia.
Startup regulars will know the feeling of going to market with a hypothesis or a value proposition or a minimum viable product. Before you have a mature offering, there’s infinite combinations of countries, product features, price points, ICPs, segments, marketing angles you can theoretically go after.
In a lean startup environment, you’re not setting up a cross-functional GTM team or an innovation stage-gate process to evaluate these combinations like in a big company. Quickly validating (or junking) your business hypothesis can save money, time and resources. Evolving the hypothesis to quick wins, is the ultimate validation.
Examples of questions NO BS helps answer are:
What is the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) for you? Which country, what function, what title and why?
What does the ICP look for in a product like yours?
What do they do they now? Do they use competitors? Which ones and why?
What are the paying for alternatives? What pricing would change their mind?
Is it worth going after this ICP?
What’s the best way to reach them- email, cold calling, Linkedin, events?
What’s the best way to pitch them?
What does our sales process look like and what’s the best CRM to support that?
Do we need a partner to go to market?
What’s the best way to find, evaluate, recruit and structure partnerships?
Examples of quantitative outcomes NO BS drives are:
Discovery meetings with ICPs
Pitch meetings with ICPs
Deal pipeline generation
Closing mid market or enterprise deals
Within 3-6 months and with a fraction of the investment of setting up a full blown team, a startup can answer real questions and weigh up real data points, to take the next set of decisions:
Do we want to continue to invest time, energy, money in this?
If we do, do the numbers justify setting up a team, or do we continue with NO BS?
What’s the optimal team size and team composition to take advantage of the nature, quantum and size of opportunities?
What does an optimal sales process from lead gen to closing deals to account management look like?
What does an optimal offering look like in terms of features, pricing, services, support?
Every business and their offering is unique, there are no easy answers, whatever the management consultant strategy decks may claim.
The NO BS take- the market holds the answers and you need to be in the market to find them.