LEAN B2B: Build Products Businesses wants

Lean B2B is a book that was birthed out of several business successes and failures. A little story about why the author wrote Lean B2B. Garbugli, alongside his ex-business partner, decided to start a business that would eventually become HireVoice, a platform to help the industry understand how the market perceives them as employers (employer brand monitoring). At first, there was a series of positive feedback but after the first few modules failed to capture the engagement with the prospects, they discovered that employer brand perception was not enough of a critical problem for companies to pay for their solution. In the end, they failed to build a sustainable business but succeeded in in-validating a startup. It was a successful validation with an adverse outcome. It took Garbugli and his business partner six months to in-validate their first two products, but only three months to invalidate the last three. Garbugli says “Inappropriate B2B customer development cost us four months of runaway and therefore Lean B2B is written to help entrepreneurs save those four months.”

Lean B2B (business to business) is not business a management or product development book. It’s a book about discovering problems that matter and being efficient as possible when going from idea to product-market. The goal of any startup is not to be a startup. A startup is a temporary organization designed to find a reputable and scalable business model. An entrepreneur who is willing to dig deep into the value chain and the into needs of the enterprise will find opportunities for breakout products. They just need the patience and product to see a chance to enter the market. B2B markets are generally much smaller compare to B2Cs. Burning leads in B2C might not be a big deal if the market has millions of potential customers but, with the substantially small market in B2B, burning leads quickly becomes a big deal. To succeed in B2B, entrepreneurs need to build deep relationships with a relatively small number of companies.

Where does it start? The only thing that matters in the first 12-18 months of a company is figuring out how to get your products into the hands of the right people. You have to identify the customers you would like to sell to. The ideal customer is an organization who matches, at a minimum, two of the following criteria:

1. Has a problem
2. Is aware of the existence of the problem
3. Has already tried to solve the problem and failed to address it

4. Is not happy with the current solution to the problem
5. Has a budget to get the problem fixed

When you are a startup, client development is the most vital activity you can do. You can develop a product, raise capital, hire a team and incorporate your business but if your product assumption doesn’t match the market needs, you’ll eventually regret having done any of those things. Your startup process will depend on your ability to be laser-focused on finding the ideal product for the right market and not burning all the money in the process. Analytics, responsive design, domain name, branding, press, etc. are not keys to your success. Without the product that people want, the perfect press release or analytic set up will never matter. Forget about vanity metrics and think small. You need to focus on P-M fit (Product-Market fit). This is when you have five passionate customers. The temptation will be strong to start optimizing and building sales channel before reaching P-M fit but resist it. Don’t build a company before you reach P-M fit. Keep your burn low.

In my professional life, I have started dozens of organizations, some with excellent results, others not so much. In the process I have read many books on startups and entrepreneurship. Lean B2B is one of the most practical and closest to real-life experience you can find. This book teaches how to build credibility with prospects, put your products into the hands of early adopters, conduct problem interviews, prioritize problems and opportunities, build an MVP, prepare a pitch, conduct solution interviews, assess whether you have found product-market fit and techniques to speed up Product-Market validation.

THE BIG THREE – KEYPOINTS

Key point #1: Entrepreneurs don’t know the market or customer but they know the product vision; it feels more natural to start there.

Key point #2: The key to succeeding in B2B is to learn to think like your customer.

Key point #3: Sometimes starting with what you have is the best thing to do.

One Last Thing

Only move forward with creating a product that will be “above the bar.”

– Brian Lawley