Our 2nd part of the Startup Series, which tells you all about why the customer is the king, and the need to build value to him or her through your product

1. BUILDING VALUE
FOR
CUSTOMERS
Is it Cinderella’s shoe, is Cinderella your customer?
Presenter: Tarun Gaur
CEO, tringapps, Inc.

2. Some definitions!
Let’s set the context …

3. The Product
… is a collection of features!

4. Customers
Buy the products you design!

5. The Market
A grouping of customers!

6. The Market
Is a set of actual or potential customers,
For a given set of products and services,
Who have common needs or wants,
Who reference each other while making buying decisions.

7. THE BUSINESS
Business is the product, product the business! Your
startup is a business, treat it like one rather than “earn
money quickly” trick!

8. Research and Development
Technology research and business analysis are two main
stays of modern R&D, innovations happen when teams
analyze, research and develop

9. Product Design
Most established companies have Product Design groups
per product, they are responsible for product experience

10. Product Engineering
Product team proposes, Engineering team disposes. In
most established companies, product and engineering
teams are parallel orgs

11. Product Marketing
They are tasked with doing things to capture market
shares. They exploit every channel to get the word out.
Their efforts result in sales picking up!

12. Product Sales
They are tasked with selling the product directly, they work
with quotas, targets and reach out to the customer to sell the
product. If sales is easy, the marketing team is helping them,
if not - there is a problem with the product or product
marketing

13. Product Support
How may I help you ma’am? err … sir?

14. Finance
Every business requires money, it’s a no-brainer. Rag tag
units that don’t have funds fizzle out

15. Relationship Management
We call it the CRM, customer relationship management.
It’s different from Product Support. Good support, results
in good relationships

16. Recommendation
Understanding these business roles is crucial, like a
minimum viable product, these roles represent a minimum
viable business! Create a spreadsheet to list down activities
under each bucket

17. STARTUP AS A BUSINESS
Entrepreneurs have to wear multiple hats!

18. Thought Leaders
Most product requirements will come from the thought
leaders - by invention or discovery

19. Action Leaders
Action leaders are good at inspiring their teams, they roll up
their cuffs and participate in the development exercise,
Thought leader and Action leader should not be the same
person

20. The Believers
Every business requires money, it’s a no-brainer. Rag tag
units that don’t have funds fizzle out

21. Voice of Customer
Every business requires money, it’s a no-brainer. Rag tag
units that don’t have funds fizzle out

22. Recommendation
Someone in the team needs to think like a customer, without
this role, your startup will fail, for sure! Create a process for
other roles

23. THE CUSTOMER
Understanding consumer behavior helps you build
better products, and refine your message

24. The customer behavior
Understanding your customer
is what stands between your
product and the market share

25. Purchasing Power
Classify your customers based on their purchasing power,
establish personas early on.
Free Loader, Rationalist, and The King!

26. The Demographics
Another way to classify customers, seldom a 20 year old
has the same needs and wants as a 60 year old.

27. The Gender
Men are from Mars, Women from Venus. Understanding
how their needs and wants vary may help you build better
value for them

28. The Location
Urban consumers think differently than Rural Consumers,
their needs and wants are generally different

29. The Culture
Generally optional, but can give you amazing insights into
purchasing behaviors of customers

30. Recommendation
Develop personas and validate your features based your
understanding of your customer profiles; then go and verify
your findings via surveys

31. CUSTOMER PSYCHE
Understanding the customer psychographic profile
helps you carve out different strategies for different
type of customers!

32. Innovators
The technology enthusiasts; they love technology for it’s
own sake

33. Early Adopters
They have the insight to match an emerging technology to
a strategic business opportunity and ability to evangelize it
within their organizations

34. Early Majority
The Pragmatists; are the hardest to sell to, they don’t buy
into revolutions, they want incremental improvements and
don’t take risks like early adopters

35. Late Majority
For every pragmatist, there is a conservative. They
represent one-third of the market but are rarely developed
as tech community thinks they are stupid and slow

36. Laggards
Skeptics; do not participate in the tech marketplace,
except to block purchases. Skeptics don’t buy or act. We
should know how to make use of that

37. Recommendation
Focus on Innovators and Early Adopters first, and then pivot
to Early Majority but have a customer acquisition strategy for
early majority in place from the start as it is difficult to judge
the inflection point at times

38. SALESFORCE: AN EXAMPLE
Software as a service

39. There is a better way
Marc Benioff screams continuously, software as a service
will spell doom for packaged software

40. The backlash
SaaS model is inherently insecure and only a fool will put
enterprise data “in the cloud”

41. The last laugh
Salesforce is one of the fastest growing software companies
in the world, with revenues touching $4Billion; packaged
software is on it’s way out

42. Salesforce
Customer Acquisition
Strategy

43. Go to the worker bee
Target salespeople and their managers instead of customer
service and marketing teams

44. The big small company
Go to mid-market companies; big enough to need systems to
compete with the industry leaders in their category, small
enough to be unable to afford the IT investments required

45. The big small company
Go to mid-market companies; big enough to need systems to
compete with the industry leaders in their category, small
enough to be unable to afford the IT investments required

46. The Culture
Focus on United States only, in part to stay close to the
customer, in part because United States has always been the
early-adopting country in enterprise software

47. The Verticals
They focussed on technology-savvy industries, beginning
with high tech itself, them moving into telco, pharma and
finally financial services

48. THE CLAIM
Passing the elevator test

49. Down to two short sentences: The claim
• For (target customers - beachhead segment)
• Who are not satisfied with (the market alternative)
• Our product is a (product category)
• That provides (compelling reason to buy)
• Unlike (the product alternative)
• Quantify the results (brings immense value)

50. Salesforce Elevator Pitch
• Our product is FOR mid-market tech savvy companies
• WHO can’t maintain relationships with customers
effectively like fortune 500 companies
• Salesforce is an online CRM suite
• THAT reduces costs, maintains data integrity and has
feature parity with cumbersome competitors
• UNLIKE Microsoft Dynamics that is a hassle to deploy,
customize and integrate
• Provides higher SLAs than enterprise software

51. Delivering Value
Once the strategy is in place, the ACTION leaders have to
implement the strategy by pushing the team to deliver.
Customer centric approach becomes crucial.

52. BUILDING VALUE IN YOUR
STARTUP
Step by Step Approach

53. Customer
Profiles
Value Maps
Who is it for? What does it do?

54. Startup Failure
90% startups fail because of their failure to identify the value
propositions for the customers therefore their business
models are flawed. The customers are very smart, if they
can’t derive value, they will not come.

55. Customer
Profiles
Who is it for? What does it do?
Value
Maps
Business
Model
How to sell it?

56. STEP 1
Identify Customer Profiles

57. Customer Profiles
Help you understand your customers better … and there is a
very simple and established method to do just that.

58. STEP 2
Identify Customer Jobs

59. Customer Jobs
describe what customers are trying to get done in their work
and in their lives, as expressed in their own words. It could
be the task they are trying to complete, the problem they are
trying to solve, or the needs they are trying to satisfy

60. Customer Jobs
• Functional
• Social
• Personal
• Support

61. Isn’t it the same?
Did you notice how Product Manager’s world is similar to
Business Analyst or Software Architect? Customer Jobs
result in Scenarios and Use Cases. If Customer Jobs are
well defined, the requirements document is robust.

62. It’s not the same!
Use Cases and Scenarios intend to set boundary to the
system and help you define the scope of the software
whereas Customer Jobs help you validate if features make
business sense or not.

63. Jobs have a context
Customer Jobs depend on the context in which they are
performed. A context may impose certain constraints or
limitations.

64. A Example
Create a User Interface for someone who is flying a plane or
someone who is driving a car!

65. STEP 3
Sort Customer Jobs based on their
importance

66. Job Importance
All things that customers do may not have the same
importance for them. Some matter more than others

67. Job Frequency
Some jobs are done more often than others, even though
they are small but they may carry more importance in the
psyche of the customer

68. STEP 4
Identify Customer Pains

69. Customer Pains
describe bad outcomes, risks, and obstacles related to
customer jobs.

70. Ask a lot of questions!
Let’s give them a name: trigger questions. Customer pains
can be identified easily if you ask a lot of trigger questions
around empathy maps

71. Trigger Questions
• How do your customers define too
costly?
• What makes your customers feel bad?
• What challenges do they encounter?
• Are they afraid of losing face?
• What common mistakes do they make?
• What is keeping them awake at night?

72. Make the pains concrete
When the customer says “waiting in line was a waste of
time”, ask the customer after how many minutes exactly it
began to feel like wasted time. That way you can note
“wasting more than x minutes standing in the line” was a
pain.

73. STEP 5
Map the Pains to Customer Jobs

74. Customer Jobs and
Customer Pains
Map each pain point to a customer job or a set of jobs. It will
help you get a clear idea of how the customer jobs can help
resolve the pain points and thereby provide value to the
customers.

75. STEP 6
Identify Customer Gains

76. Customer Gains
describe the outcomes and benefits your customers want.
Some gains are required, expected, or desired by the
customers, and some would surprise them.

77. Why bother about gains?
Your customers achieve functional utility, social gains,
positive emotions, or cost savings

78. Gain Types
• Required Gains
• Expected Gains
• Desired Gains
• Unexpected Gains

79. Apple Example
• Required Gain: Can I make a phone call?
• Expected Gain: Apple phones are well designed
• Desired Gain: Apple phone integrates with my MacBook
• Unexpected Gain: The force touch (for upcoming models)

80. Difference: Pain and Gain
Pains are negative, gains are positive! Customer frustrations
and rants give you pains, delight gives you gain

81. Surveys are important
Whenever you engage your potential customers on pains,
always end with a positive question: What would make this
pain go away? … and you will most definitely identify the gain.

82. STEP 7
Rank Customer Jobs, Pains and
Gains

83. Ranking is the key
Ranking jobs, pains and gains is essential in order to design
value propositions that address things that customers really
care about.

84. How to rank?
• Ranking Jobs: From Important to Insignificant
• Ranking Pains: From Extreme to Moderate
• Ranking Gains: From Essential to Nice to Have

85. STEP 8
Validate the rankings of customer
jobs, pains and gains

86. Validate
You may start with what you think is important for the
customer but do not forget to verify it by interacting with your
potential customers at some point

87. Customer
Profiles
Who is it for? What does it do?
Value
Maps
Business
Model
How to sell it?

88. QUESTIONS

89. INDIA STARTUP IGNITERS
We need YOU to participate, let’s
collectively help fellow entrepreneurs
to build cool startups!