Total Pageviews
Wednesday, 18 December 2019
Holiday gifts for dad that he will actually use
from Digital Trends https://ift.tt/2Q15NWi
via IFTTT
Kia may be planning to ditch car names for alphanumerics in the US - Roadshow
from CNET https://ift.tt/2PwkYYf
via IFTTT
SEC charges IT administrator over $7 million insider trading ring
Peter Thiel told Mark Zuckerberg not to change political ad rules, report says
Google fixes Chrome 79 data loss bug on Android
from Latest news https://ift.tt/2Pvk6TG
via IFTTT
Huawei opens 5G innovation centre in London
from Latest news https://ift.tt/38TI9DN
via IFTTT
Australia's Elenium and its plan to make end-to-end travel seamless
from Latest news https://ift.tt/2sEulMs
via IFTTT
Unroll.me settles with FTC after falsely claiming it didn’t collect and sell email data
Before this year’s blockbuster Superhuman scandal, in which the email app maker was caught providing a non-consensual read receipt feature to its users, there was the Unroll.me controversy.
It erupted two years ago, when it was discovered the popular email cleanup tool was collecting information on user purchases and handing it over to its parent company, Slice Technologies, to sell as part of an analytics tool. Specifically, Unroll.me was caught selling receipt data to Uber so the ride hailing service could better target customers who might be using its competitor Lyft more often.
It didn’t go over well, especially after the CEO said he was heartbroken “to see that some of our users were upset to learn about how we monetize our free...
from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2S0p3FI
via IFTTT
The internet’s name regulator says it’s ‘uncomfortable’ with the .org deal
Remember when the organization in charge of .org domain names traditionally used by non-profits decided to sell itself to a for-profit company? It surprised everyone because up to that point, there was little indication that the Internet Society (ISOC) was shopping the Public Interest Registry (PIR) for sale. Among those surprised, it appears, was ICANN, the organization that oversees the internet’s top-level domains, which now says it is “uncomfortable” with the lack of transparency around the deal and wants ISOC to pump the brakes.
“ICANN’s role is to ensure that the .org top-level domain remains secure, reliable, and stable under the proposed acquisition of Public Interest Registry (PIR) by Ethos Capital,” Göran Marby, ICANN...
from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2Z32cLs
via IFTTT
Cyberattack on Twitter targeted Epilepsy Foundation with strobing images - CNET
from CNET https://ift.tt/2PveybO
via IFTTT
Get a closer look at Ad Astra's science in this exclusive clip from the Blu-ray version - CNET
from CNET https://ift.tt/36RInJL
via IFTTT
Sprint's free service helps customers detect, block robocalls - CNET
from CNET https://ift.tt/2PxLJvF
via IFTTT
1917 review: One-take WW1 epic a breathless anthem for doomed youth - CNET
from CNET https://ift.tt/35xu8tf
via IFTTT
Best bar gifts for Christmas 2019 - CNET
from CNET https://ift.tt/2rLne53
via IFTTT
2020 Audi RS Q8: Fast, not furious - Roadshow
from CNET https://ift.tt/2S9wMBk
via IFTTT
Amazon won't let sellers use FedEx Ground for Prime orders - CNET
from CNET https://ift.tt/2tkfpn6
via IFTTT
Huawei P40 Pro launching in March without Google support - CNET
from CNET https://ift.tt/2ErovAG
via IFTTT
CHEOPS launch: Watch live as mission to study alien worlds blasts off - CNET
from CNET https://ift.tt/2szK1Rg
via IFTTT
How startups close their first big sales
No matter what your startup sells or who you’re selling it to, companies that survive — and grow — need big customers and lots of them. But how do you land million-dollar deals with limited resources and no credibility?
In more than 20 years of building companies and products, I’ve learned that in the grand scheme of the startup lifecycle, while you scale your way through growth to eventual sustainability and success, acquiring your first customer is relatively easy. Any good salesperson can sell a good product to the prospect of their choice. Hell, any mediocre salesperson, even when they’re hawking complete crap, can get lucky once. Your first customer is a great signal, but it’s just a signal, not a savior.
What actually matters is what we learn from that first signal and all the signals that follow.
Aggregate value to target prospects
The process starts way before the first sales pitch. Your chances of closing your first big sale are going to be directly related to how well you’re targeting your prospective customers. So let’s begin with a discussion of aggregation and targeting.
All product and service sales come down to usage and aggregated value. It doesn’t matter if your target customer is a consumer or a business. It makes no difference if your price point is dollars or thousands of dollars. It doesn’t matter if your transaction is completely frictionless or requires a six-month hand-hold by your sales team.
If your customer is a consumer, they’re going to have limited usage with your product or service and the value needs to be tightly wound into that small usage window. If your customer is a business, they’re likely going to have multiple users and almost continuous usage of the product or service, so the value will be delivered over time.
So a “lot of customers” for your product or service might be 100, or it might be a million. Either way, you’re offering the same value per dollar based on usage. You’re aggregating that value into the sale, so you need to be targeting those customer prospects with the highest expected usage.
A classic rookie mistake made by most entrepreneurs is spraying and praying at large prospect audiences for the sake of their largeness alone, hoping that those shards of value surface for the right people at the right time.
Don’t do that. Instead, for B2C sales, you’re going to need some intelligence about your prospect list, which means more than Facebook ad demographics — it’s being able to predict the usage based on the source of the prospect. For B2B sales, you need to determine the optimum type of business to sell into: their size, their industry, their appetite for innovation, and anything else you can use to narrow your focus.
Figure out who is going to get the most aggregate value for their usage and target them.
Targeting customer prospects based on value aggregation is not only going to increase the chances of closing, it’s also going to dictate the near future in terms of the growth of your startup. A targeted, good customer is going to make your life a lot easier. A random, poor customer is going to fill your world with complaints, support requests, change requests, feature requests, and ultimately severe changes to your product roadmap.
Consolidate and find a champion
When you’re a startup, your customers are buying innovation. The tricky thing is, no one needs innovation. Rather, they need the derivatives of that innovation — time, simplification, throughput, security.
In order to close a big sale, in other words, the aggregation of many, many units of that usage and value, you’re going to have to consolidate that usage and find a champion of value on the customer side.
So the question becomes: Who benefits the most from the derivatives of innovation brought about by maximizing the usage of your product or service?
via Startups – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2S4pRJK