Posts by mjmedlock:
Applying Monroe’s Motivated Sequence in an Elevator Pitch
Monroe’s Motivated Sequence provides an excellent framework for an elevator pitch. Your elevator pitch is a short, persuasive speech that helps you get an appointment with a decision-maker. It must be compelling because these decision-makers whether they are investors, bankers or purchasing managers, are faced daily with a large number of interesting opportunities. It has to be short because these are busy people who appreciate people who respect their time constraints.
Attention
These people are busy. Longwinded introductions such as stories won’t grab their attention. PR stunts are likely to annoy them. You’ll have to find a way such as an interesting fact, or something that connects to their current agenda to get their attention.
Need
Talk about the need for your product. This will be customer pain points that your product either reduces or eliminates. It could be the application of new technology to address a problem in a better way. Quickly state the need and then illustrate the need with an example to show that it is real. Quantifying the size of the need, in other words potential market size, will also be helpful.
Satisfaction
Propose a way of meeting this need. This is of course your company’s product. Tell them how it solves the problem. If possible provide some examples of any successes you have had.
Visualization
Tell them of how the world will be better if the market adopts your solution. You could also show them how the world will be a poorer place without your solution. Alternatively, you could do both. Although in reality you probably won’t have time.
Action
Prompt them to take action. In this context it is getting a commitment for a lengthier meeting soon. The important words are commitment and soon.
Final thoughts
Using Monroe’s Motivated Sequence won’t guarantee that you get that all important sales or investment meeting, but it will increase your odds. It’s worth your while investing time developing your pitch and practicing it until it is fluid and natural. This means that you can bring it out whenever a surprise opportunity presents itself. After all, fortune favours the prepared.
Basic Accounting and Indicators for Entrepreneurs
Accounts tell us about the health of our company. Forecast account help us understand what we need to do to remain healthy in the future. For a start-up business the most important financial document is the cash flow forecast. This does not mean that the profit and loss statement (a.k.a. income statement) and the balance […]
Define Your Key Competitive Advantage
It’s unlikely that you will be entering a completely empty market place. You will have to compete with incumbents of some form. It is therefore vital to have a strong competitive advantage over the competition. A commonly used model is the VRIO framework. Although this is a good model, it is too complex for a […]
Determine The Value Proposition
The value proposition is a measure of the benefit a customer gets from using a product or service. To succeed a new product needs to give the user superior value over her current product solution. You should hopefully remember from your marketing courses that a customer does not buy a product; she buys a benefit. […]
Product or Service Use Case
This section describes how the customer becomes aware of a product, acquires and gets value from it. We do this so we can understand how a product fits into a customer’s life. The more insight we can get the better, as we can learn to create, promote and support the customer. Setting down this process […]
Beachhead Markets
New business ideas require total focus. For this reason, the entrepreneur needs to avoid the temptation to go after multiple targets when first entering a market. Because we have limited resources, we should dedicate all our efforts to dominating one single set of customers. Spreading our efforts over multiple goals will just mean that we […]
TAM Total Addressable Market
It is important to determine the size of your beachhead market, as this will indicate if your selection is appropriate. First you need to estimate the number of end users for your product. Next, you should estimate the annual revenue each user will generate for your company. Your beachhead TAM should not be too small, […]
New Trade Theory First Mover Advantage – Learning Curve Effects
New trade theory shows the importance of first mover advantage. Most people understand first mover advantage from the marketing and economies of scales points of view. However, the learning curve effects of being first are just as important. This is especially true if a firm or an economy have natural cost advantages, but are late […]
Heckscher-Ohlin Theory & The Leontief Paradox
Heckscher-Ohlin Theory & The Leontief Paradox Summary of video • Ricardo believed comparative advantage come from differences in labour productivity • Heckscher-Ohlin theory posits that comparative advantage comes from factor endowments • Countries will export goods in which they have relative abundance of factor endowments • In other words, they will export goods which make […]
Comparative Advantage – International Trade Theories
Comparative advantage is a trade theory which was developed by David Ricardo in the 18th century. The theories builds Adam Smith’s work to show that countries can benefit from trade. Ricardo’s key insight was that two countries could both benefit from trade even if one of the countries had an absolute advantage in producing all […]