I recently did a podcast interview with Harry Stebbings of “The Twenty Minute VC” where we talked about the 9 step model for how B2B startups need to get through product/market fit, and then how they should go about finding a repeatable, scalable, and profitable growth process. For those of who are interested in learning more about the model, please also look at the slide deck that I include below the podcast links. Harry Stebbings is always a pleasure to talk to. He prepares very well for the discussion, and has a genuine enthusiasm that keeps things fun and interesting. In this podcast and slide deck, I talks through my 9 steps for B2B startups to get through product/market fit, and to then find a repeatable, scalable, and profitable growth process.
IMPORTANT NOTE: In my experience some of the most fatal and expensive mistakes founders make is trying to skip steps. Understanding this roadmap will save you countless hours and potentially millions of wasted dollars.
If you are interested in documenting you own Buyer’s Journey and using my ideas for documenting Friction, Buyer’s Concerns, and Motivations at each step, you might find the following Google Sheets template helpful. On the first tab is a very generic buyer’s journey. On the second tab, you will see an illustration of how this changes for a real world situation, in this case a developer starts the buyer’s journey, but the actual purchase decision happens when the project that they are developing reaches the point where it is about to go into production, and the Ops or DevOps persona gets involved. So you see two buyer personae, and how they experience your sales and marketing process.
To use these templates, I recommend that you start by documenting your current marketing and sales process steps that you expect a buyer to go through. Then step back and take the buyer’s point of view and document their process, and think about how they are going to react as they reach each of your steps.