Funnel of Opportunity
In the Funnel of Opportunity, we think about marketing in the reverse order. We start with our core customer and core value proposition. With a start-up, it is with our beachhead market. When we start our marketing with core customers; things begin to change. We create better relationships and a higher level of learning opportunities. Thus, we can communicate more effectively across more channels and/or people within our customers, develop more business development opportunities and connect with influencers. You must be willing to dig deep to understand customers. It becomes all about engagement and building effective feedback loops. These loops become our method of learning. We use this learning to provide more value to our customers and participate with them at the relevant edges of the use of our products/services. The Funnel of Opportunity is created from the edges of these learnings. We learn how and who to engage within other organizations. We build upon the known toward the unknown. Always reaching out pushing the edges, looking for adjacency in our markets. It is not about creating a downstream or upstream in some funnel; it is about being relevant in our customer’s market. This type of thinking is outcome-based. A defined outcome provides a set of standards so that we can be prepared for our engagements. By having these standards, it creates a set of boundaries for us to work in and when we hit an obstacle, it is just a pause because we know where we are headed. How often do you assume you know what your customers want? How often do you create marketing and sales campaigns internally? How much time and money do you waste marketing to the masses?
