Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup

STEP 18

Map the Sales Process to Acquire a Customer

IN THIS STEP, YOU WILL:

• Develop short-term, medium-term, and long-term sales strategies for your product.

Understanding the details of customer acquisition will make clear to you the drivers of costs so that you will know over time how to make the sales process shorter and more cost-effective.

Now that you have done a first-pass estimate on the lifetime value each customer brings to your business, the question becomes “How much it will cost to bring a new customer to your product?” Determining the LTV might have seemed complicated, but the Cost of Customer Acquisition (COCA) is generally even more challenging and often much more grossly miscalculated.

The concept of COCA is relatively simple; but entrepreneurs (myself included) tend to dramatically underestimate how much it costs to gain a new customer when they first start.

To truly understand how much you will have to spend on your sales process in order to gain customers, you ...