Week 2: March 18 - March 22
Week 2: March 18 - March 22
Our third week focuses on your value proposition. Teams are encouraged to schedule meetings with Subject Matter Mentors of their choosing.
Monday, March 18, 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM EDT
Framing Your Market Opportunity (90 minutes): How to develop Customer Personas to characterize the key elements of your target markets; teams will be asked to develop their own customer personas.
-> Zoom link
For session discussion
What are 2-3 of your challenges in planning, designing, developing, sourcing, building
or testing your service/product(s), etc. You can encompass issues aligning marketing
with product development.
Crafting a Compelling Value Proposition (90 minutes): How to frame your company’s value proposition in a way that is compelling to your target customers; teams will be asked to refine and pitch their value propositions
-> Zoom link
Framing Your Market Opportunity deck
Framing Your Market Opportunity recording
Crafting a Compelling Value Proposition deck
Crafting a Compelling Value Proposition recording
Wednesday, March 20, 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM EDT
To Be Rescheduled: Building a Marketing and Sales Engine (90 minutes): An overview of the art and science of building a repeatable, scalable marketing and sales engine; the concept of developing an Ecosystem Strategy will be discussed; teams will be asked to build or refine their customer pipeline.
Company Culture: Building a Team of Leaders (90 minutes): The importance of articulating the values and norms of your company culture will be discussed, along with a discussion of leadership; teams will be asked to share the definitions of their own company cultures and identify possible areas for improvement.
-> Zoom link
Pricing: The Art and Science (90 minutes): We will discuss how companies sustain innovation as they grow and mature; teams will be asked to identify opportunities for innovation within their own companies
-> Zoom link
Framing Your Market Opportunity
We will discuss how to effectively assess and communicate your Market Opportunity. As preparation, please read Bill Reichert’s two posts about the irrelevance of traditional TAM calculations:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/stop-madness-more-tams-bill-reichert/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sizing-your-market-opportunity-bill-reichert-1c/
And on the point of understanding your persona's motivation to buy your product/service, we will talk about the "jobs to be done" approach. If you do not know of Clay Christensen’s “Jobs to be done” approach, please watch one or more of the many videos available: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jobs+to+be+done+clayton+christensen or read an online article.
[If you want to work ahead] We will be discussing the difference between a Persona versus a Market Segment and how a Persona sets you up to create a strong marketing strategy. Then after the workshop, you will work on your persona(s) and can discuss this topic with your mentor or can pair up with another cohort member to test the strength of your personas. If you would like to work ahead, read this description about understanding the persona of your primary customer segment:
https://www.metabeta.com/articles/process/how-to-create-a-persona-and-an-end-user-for-your-startup/
Value Proposition
Video: “Value Proposition Canvas”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiWkRiynPAo
Article: “How to Write a Great Value Proposition” https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/write-value-proposition
Testing Your Value Proposition
Develop your value proposition statement and try it out with friends and strangers, ideally people
who understand your target customers, or who are your target customers:
Is it clear? Can people repeat it? Do they understand it?
Is it compelling? Is it 10x better? Or only a little better?
Is it credible? Do people believe you? Do you have evidence?
You might want to develop a few different versions and test them to see what resonates most
strongly.
Upload "homework" here
Ongoing:
Weekly Mentor Meeting
Office Hours: Teams can schedule time with Subject Matter Mentors.