The Resource Guide is created by Grace Liu and Gabriella Velazquez
Updated on Janurary 8, 2022
Acquiring customers is one of the most challenging aspects of launching a new business faced by student entrepreneurs (Blackstone LaunchPad & Techstars, 2020). Haring (2018) discovered that in certain cases, student start-ups are too embedded into an existing network and customer relations, resulting in a large part of the revenue dependent on one or two clients, so business disruption occurs when clients do not extend their contracts. The early success of student ventures often starts with securing major funding or acquiring major customers. To sustain the business, student entrepreneurs need continuous effort to diversify their customer base (Haring, 2018). This Guide introduces resources to help student entrepreneurs connect with diversified customers and drive sales.
The courses selected can be audited for free and you can find the audit instructions for Coursera and Edx courses.
The Art of Sales: Mastering the Selling Process Specialization (Northwestern University)
The Art of Sales Specialization is designed to make you more effective and efficient as you pursue your sales goals. Understand how to stand out in the crowd, attract customers, and build support for your initiatives within your company. Knowing how to “get to yes” is a crucial skill that can improve many facets of your life. Prepare to be tested, taught, and transformed as you learn to locate new customers and get great results.
Entrepreneurship 103: Show Me The Money (MITx)
With this module, you will learn designing a business model, pricing your product, building a sales process, measuring your cost of customer acquisition and estimating the lifetime value of your customer.
Fundamentals of Customers and Competition (Goldman Sachs)
In this course, you will examine your customers’ buying process and explore the benefits of market segmentation. By the end of this course, you will have developed a clear Customer Value Proposition (CVP). This will enable you to communicate your business offering to your target audience in a compelling way.
Managing the Value of Customer Relationships (Wharton Online - University of Pennsylvania )
Learn how to identify your most valuable customers to develop and implement customer-centric strategies and maximize their strategic value.
Customer Value in Pricing Strategy (University of Virginia)
In this course, we'll show you how to price a product based on how your customers value it and the psychology behind their purchase decisions. Developed at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, and led by top-ranked Darden faculty and Boston Consulting Group global pricing experts, this course provides an in-depth understanding of value-based pricing and how to use it to capture more revenue.
Introduction to Connected Strategy (Wharton Online)
Technology has caused firms to fundamentally change their strategy to connect with their customers in new and different ways. In this course, we explore the impact of connected strategies as well as business opportunities associated with those strategies.
Implementing Customer Insights for Your Business (UTDelft)
This course teaches how to put customer insights, like those from context mapping, to work for innovation or marketing in your company.
Entrepreneurial Selling (Kauffman Foundation)
In this series, we explore a few of the critical skills and tools that entrepreneurs can use to succeed in selling. Our purpose is to help you become as efficient and effective as possible in the sales process, because you don’t have a minute to waste.
Fundamentals of Digital Marketing, Social Media, and E-Commerce (Wharton Online - University of Pennsylvania)
In this business and management course, you will gain an understanding of how the digital economy works and develop the critical insights necessary to succeed in e-commerce and digital and social media marketing.
Retail Marketing Strategy (Wharton Online - University of Pennsylvania)
In this course, Professor Barbara Kahn will explain what it means to switch from a product-focused approach to a customer-focused approach and create a marketing strategy to deliver real customer value. Learning from companies that have been most successful during this wave of change, this course will offer insights as to what we can learn from their ascendance. Building on these insights, Professor Kahn will present the "Kahn Retailing Success Matrix" which provides a framework that any company can use to create a competitive strategy to survive and thrive in today's – and tomorrow's – disruptive environment. By the end of this course, you will be able to identify the changing expectations with regard to creating superior customer experiences and valued-based branding.
Inside Seth Godin's Masterclass and Seth Godin on marketing, storytelling, attention, and the future of work
Marketing author Seth Godin discusses five of his most well-known books + more:
Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, All Marketers Are Liars, Tribes, Linchpin, The Icarus Deception. And a short report on his book.
The Lean Approach: Customer Acquisition and Archetypes (Kauffman Founders School)
Steve Blank argues the importance of creating a customer archetype to help you figure out where to find them. This video covers the acquisition process, and helps you understand concepts such as the lifetime value of a customer. Learn how to avoid mistakes in customer acquisition.
Selling with Innovation Tools: How Strategyzer's Framework can Improve your Sales Process
As sales professionals, one of the most important things for us to do is gain a deep understanding of our customers and prospects’ business models, how they create value for themselves, how they create value for their customers, what their pains are and what they are trying to accomplish.
The Customer Playbook (Talks at Google)
In this talk, Peter Faders and Sarah Toms shared their insights about the customer lifetime value from their book The Customer Centricity Playbook: Implement a Winning Strategy Driven by Customer Lifetime Value.
Customer Acquisition with Andy Payne (Harvard i-lab)
How can you be as good at customer acquisition as you are at product? This workshop focuses on on-line customer acquisition techniques: banner ads, paid search, SEO, inbound marketing, "ghetto testing", social media marketing, analytics, etc. Andrew Payne is a Boston-area entrepreneur, executive, inventor, and investor.
Experience Mapping with Jim Kalbach: New Trends and Directions
In this session, Jim Kalbach, the author of Mapping Experiences and Chief Evangelist at MURAL, sheds light on experience mapping and its trends. Jim covers facilitation, mapping the employee experience, and other directions experience mapping is heading.
For the Win: Using Connected Strategies to Gain a Competitive Advantage
Nicolaj Siggelkow and Christian Terwiesch discussed the essence in their book Connected Strategy: Building Continuous Customer Relationships for Competitive Advantage.
Tyler Bosmeny from YC alumnus Clever shares his expertise on how an early stage company should think about sales and about building an enterprise sales team.
Sales for Techstartups: Strategies for Growing a Successful Sales Team
In this webinar hosted by the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business and Cornell’s Johnson eClub, you’ll learn how to scale your biotech, software, STEM, or physical product company. Our panel of experts will share best practices for establishing an institutional sales process for your innovation and walk you through when and how to scale up your sales team and position them for success.
Open for Business Your Startup and Government Contracts (Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP)
Gustaf Alstromer - How to Get Users and Grow
YC Partner Gustaf Alströmer, who was most recently a growth expert at Airbnb describes strategies for scaling your user base.
Go-to-Marketing Strategies for Startups
Kim Walsh, Global VP at HubSpot for Startups, unpacks the key components to a winning GTM strategy for startups. From defining your market and customer to building your product roadmap, she outlines the steps every founder should consider. Kim also uncovers the frameworks needed to enter the market and answer questions on how to evolve your GTM as your startup grows and products evolve.
NYU Startup School: Customer Acquisition
Hear from Rich Fulop, founder & CEO of Brooklinen, about what makes a good customer acquisition strategy and discover which tactics are right for your business.
You can search Harvard Business Review to learn more articles on this topic. You can also check if your university library has a subscription to the Business Source Complete database, which provides full-text access to Harvard Business Review articles, or use the library’s interlibrary loan service to access the article.
Starting With The Customer (Strategizer)
Mind the GAP: Using Buyer Insights to Drive Product Development, Design Market Strategy, and Develop Sales Plays (Buyer Persona Institute)
Using Customer Journey Maps to Improve Customer Experience (Harvard Business Review)
Customer Experience Resources, including Your ultimate guide to customer journey mapping (Qualtrics)
Inbound Marketing and its free online Inbound Marketing Course: Get Certified in Inbound Marketing
The following subscribed directory databases would allow you to identify and/or acquire contact of potential customers and clients, check if they are available at the academic or public libraries near you:
Reference Solutions: Directory information for publicly and privately owned companies in the United States and Canada, as well as information about individual consumers in both countries. It can be used for sales leads, mailing lists, market research, employment opportunities, etc.
AtoZdatabases: Database including 30 million business & executive profiles & 240 million residents. It can be used for sales leads, mailing lists, market research, employment opportunities, etc.
Dun & Bradstreet: This is a good source for some basic company information but they do charge for most of what they have including the products that they sell. Most companies have D&B reports (generally for credit information). Dun & Bradstreet is a publisher that often actively seeks information from private firms by directly calling the company. Much of the information in a D&B report is voluntary so the quantity of information will likely vary from company to company.
Developing Customer Insights with Empathy Map Canvas
Use the empathy map canvas to develop empathetic insight on your customers. Empathy mapping is a visualization tool that allows you to articulate what you know about the customers. As part of the design thinking methodology, it empowers you to create a shared understanding of customer functional, psychological and emotional needs.
Customer Journey Maps with IoT Touchpoints in Miro
Learn to create a customer journey map that includes touchpoints from the internet (IoT). It enables businesses to understand the holistic customer experience by considering their user experience (UX) and when user interface (UX) design may influence that experience.
Click the link to find a Worldcat book record; enter a zipcode to check which library nearby has the book you can borrow. When the record is not available, a link to Amazon is provided.
Blank, Steven G. The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products That Win. Pescadero, 2013. Print.
Dolan, Gabrielle. Magnetic Stories: Connect with Customers and Engage Employees with Brand Storytelling. 2021. Print.
Fader, Peter S, and Sarah Toms. The Customer Centricity Playbook: Implement a Winning Strategy Driven by Customer Lifetime Value. 2018. Print.
Kalbach, James. Mapping Experiences: A Complete Guide to Customer Alignment Through Journeys, Blueprints, and Diagrams. 2021. Print.
Mares, Justin. Traction - How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth. 2015. Print.
Morgan, Blake. Customer of the Future: 10 Guiding Principles for Winning Tomorrow's Business. Thomas Nelson Pub, 2019. Print.
Siggelkow, Nicolaj, and Christian Terwiesch. Connected Strategy: Building Continuous Customer Relationships for Competitive Advantage. 2019. Print.
Adamson, Brent. Challenger Customer. Penguin Publishing Group, 2015. Print.
Berger, Jonah. Contagious: Why Things Catch on. 2016. Print.
Hess, Garin. Selling Is Hard. Buying Is Harder: How Buyer Enablement Drives Digital Sales and Shortens the Sales Cycle. River Grove Books, 2020. Print.
Pink, Daniel H. To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others. 2013. Print.
Read, Nicholas A. C, and Stephen J. Bistritz. Selling to the C-Suite: What Every Executive Wants You to Know About Successfully Selling to the Top. 2018. Print.
Read More Books on Connecting with Customers and Driving Sales.
Steve Blank is a serial entrepreneur, and creator of the customer development method that launched the lean startup movement. And also wrote the book The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products That Win.
Peter S. Fader is the Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His expertise centers around the analysis of behavioral data to understand and forecast customer shopping/purchasing activities. is the author of Customer Centricity: Focus on the Right Customers for Strategic Advantage and coauthor with Sarah E. Toms of the book The Customer Centricity Playbook.
Nicolaj Siggelkow is the David M. Knott Professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He is a Co-Director of the Mack Institute for Innovation Management at Wharton.
Seth Godin is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, and speaker. In addition to launching one of the most popular blogs in the world, he has written 19 best-selling books, including The Dip, Linchpin, Purple Cow, Tribes, and What To Do When It’s Your Turn (And It’s Always Your Turn). His most recent book, This is Marketing, was an instant bestseller in countries around the world.
SCORE mentors offer customer relations-related consultation via video, email, phone, or in-person.
Understand Consumers and Test the Market
Blackstone LaunchPad & Techstars. (2020). Student Entrepreneurial Outlook 2020 Survey Report. https://www.blackstonelaunchpad.org/blog/student-entrepreneurial-outlook-2020-survey-report/
Haring, M. (2018). How Student Entrepreneurs Develop Their Social Network Over Time During the Process of Starting a Company. Business and Management Studies, 4(1), 68-80.