1. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST
1. What’s your big idea?
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2. What are the features and benefits of your product/ services?
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3. What problem does your product/service solve?
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4. What is the profile of your ideal target customer?
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a. What is the profile of your ideal target user (within the target company)?
b. Age, gender, sexual preference marital status etc.
c. What are they passionate about?
d. Where do they live? Where do they work?
e. What types of people, places or things do they like?
f. How do they learn and where do they like to go to learn?
g. What do they read? When do they read it? Where do they read?
h. What shops, Web sites, etc. do they purchase products from?
i. What meetings, groups, and classes do they attend?
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5. How does the user currently solve the problem in question?
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2. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST
6. What is the pain extraction question/value proposition message if you get in front of your ideal
customer?
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7. What is the usage model of the product?
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8. What are some compelling use cases?
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9. Which market? Which segment? Why?
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10. How big is the market? Is it big enough? How do you expand, if not? Should you expand, or should you
focus within a niche?
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11. What is your technology?
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12. What is the application of this technology?
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3. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST
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Competitive Positioning & Pricing
1. Who is the competition, and how do you differentiate from them?
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2. What are the various classes of products in immediate and related categories?
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3. What, of those, compete directly with you?
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4. Which ones are likely to move into your space?
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5. How do your product features compare with the competitions? Can you compete on the basis of
functionality?
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6. How does your product pricing compare with the competitions? Can you compete on the basis of price?
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4. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST
7. What are customers willing to pay for your solution? 1/10 the key competitor’s price? Same price?
200% the price?
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8. What price can you charge based on perceived value?
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9. Can you offer both better performance and lower price?
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10. Whom do you need to partner with to offer a full solution?
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11. Can you turn some of the competition to partners/channel relationships, so not to go head-to-head?
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Sales and Marketing
1. What is your value proposition ?
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2. How do you communicate that value in 20 words or less?
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5. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST
3. What pain extraction questions correspond to that value? In other words, if a sales rep gets a relevant
stakeholder on the phone, what should she ask? Or, what should she ask in a succinct email, to gain
permission for further engagement?
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4. What are the top target segments (verticals, size, and geography)?
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5. What is the best way to generate a list of the target accounts within the segments?
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6. What job titles are we after within those accounts?
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7. What is the organizational map within the account that maps to the sales cycle?
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8. What are the names of the stakeholders who correspond with the economic buyer, the technical decision
maker, etc.?
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9. What is the pain extraction question/value proposition message if someone with the right job title gets
on the phone?
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6. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST
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10. What are the criteria for a qualified lead?
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11. What lead generation programs do you plan to pursue? Google PPC advertising? E-mail campaigns?
Tradeshows? Other forms of online advertising?
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12. How do you plan to qualify the leads? Telemarketing? Outsourced? In-house?
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Business Development
1. What is the appropriate channel strategy (direct, resellers, system integrators, telesales)?
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2. Are there channel conflicts? How do you resolve?
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3. What paid proof-of-concept/pilot engagement/evaluation framework will get you to a deal within a short
time?
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4. What are the appropriate sales cycle steps, next steps, and duration breakdown?
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7. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST
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5. What is the likelihood of a deal by sales cycle steps? How do you forecast?
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6. What are the must-have key target accounts? Why? What do you need to accomplish in those
engagements to be able to achieve high leverage for reference selling, proof-points, and metrics?
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7. Do you have reference accounts? What is the best strategy to leverage the reference accounts and proof
points?
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8. How do you build new reference accounts? Who is your target? Why? How do you penetrate, sell, and
demonstrate ROI?
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9. Are there must-have channel relationships? What do you need to do to appropriately establish and
manage them?
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10. What kind of channel discount do you need to provide to enlist the channel to perform on your behalf?
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11. What is the competition, and how do you position against them?
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8. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST
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12. What is the business model? On-Demand? Subscription? Advertising – CPM? CPC? CPA? Transaction
fee – fixed? Commission? Final value
fee?________________________________________________________________________________
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13. How do you build traffic? What FREE incentive can you offer to bring users en-masse to your site?
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14. What premium service can you offer that users would want to pay for? How much would they pay?
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15. How do you plan to sell ads? Internal ad sales force? Ad networks? Which ones? What kind of ad rates
can you command?
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16. What ad management system will you use if you do it internally?
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17. Are you going to advertise online to recruit customers? Google/Yahoo! PPC? On blogs and other sites?
Which sites? Using which ad networks?
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18. What are your search engine marketing/search engine optimization strategies? What keywords are you
trying to own/position around? How expensive are they?
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9. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST
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19. For your category, what are the most influential blogs? How will you get them to talk about you?
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20. What are the top mainstream media properties that you need to get written up in?
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21. Whom do you need to partner with to offer a full solution/whole product?
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22. Whom do you partner with to generate traffic? Under what terms?
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23. Do you have a widget strategy for Facebook, iPhone, Hi5, MySpace, etc. to generate traffic and
visibility?
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CORPORATE
1. What is the product roadmap for the company?
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2. What is the unifying theme that positions the company and leverages its strengths (technology, product,
channel, current customers, references, etc.)?

10. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST
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3. Is there a platform strategy? A point-product strategy?A solution strategy? What holds all these
together? How do you position to make it into an integrated big story?
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4. What products/pieces need to be repositioned/repackaged to align with the corporate strategy?
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5. What is the full story? Is it a powerful, differentiated story that can go beyond a point-product/one-trick pony
to become a category leader?
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6. What is the category? Do you define a new category, or position within an existing one?
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7. What technology/product/channel/media elements need to be introduced/influenced to make it into a larger
story?
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8. What broad scale industry trends can you impact based on your offering, and how do you position to align
with such trends?
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9. What is your funding strategy? How do you position, package, and sell?

11. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST
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10. What is your exit strategy? How do you position, package, and sell?
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EXECUTION ROADMAP
1. What is your next major milestone? (Product launch, funding round, exit)?
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2. What derivative milestones/related projects do you need to accomplish to be able to stay on track and
execute on the strategy?
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3. What is the project-resource-timeline map tracking to the next milestone?
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13. What is the messaging matrix?
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14. What is the PR strategy?
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12. PUT YOUR IDEA TO THE TEST
15. Do you have the resources to staff all the projects that lead up to the milestones?
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16. Who will manage lead sourcing/lead generation/lead qualification?
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17. Who will manage the PR process, pitches, follow-ups, etc.?
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18. Who will write the collateral? (Web site, sales pitches, data sheets)
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19. Who will design and produce the Web site?
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20.
What is the key additional hires/timeframe?
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21. Does everything align with your operating plan/budget? What tradeoffs do you need to make? What are
the prioritization algorithms?
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