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 […]
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, […]
Campari Lending
Campari Lending Principles Campari lending principles are a set of guidelines used by banks and some investors to structure how they go about making lending decisions. An awareness of the campari lending principles is useful for business owners for writing and presenting their business plans. They can be used as a check list to make […]
Essential Elements Of A Business Plan
Business plans can vary in layout and content, but most business plans have several things in common. Here are what most people agree to be the essential elements of a business plan. But first, why have a business plan in the first place? Surely we can’t predict the future with any accuracy, so why bother? […]