Friday, 22 April 2022

End of the week! Man, work was just… wow. I mean, sure, it was good and all. But, I was just given full responsibility for this one project and it’s turning out to be a handful when combined with the fact that I am working on website design. Even though I’m mainly left with only configurations and final touches for the website, it’s still going to be a massive task to do it all within the coming week.

On the NFT front, I focused on reading Zero to One. I just can’t get started on other stuff, seems like. May need that break earlier than I thought. But, even if it's a week from now, it’s still fine. What matters is that it's coming.

Today’s chapter was on sales and distribution, and it was really insightful.

We often underestimate the importance of distribution. For many of us, salespeople supposedly get in the way and we believe distribution should flow magically from the creation of a good product. However, customers will not come just because you build it. You have to make it happen.

Advertising matters, because it works. It doesn’t exist to make you buy a product right away, but to embed subtle impressions that will drive sales later.

Sales work best when hidden. None of us want to be reminded when we’re being sold. Sales ability also distinguishes superstars from also-rans. Anyone who thinks a product can ‘sell itself’ is lying. The best product doesn’t always win. Distribution is essential to the design of your product. If you’ve invented something new, but not a way to sell it, you have a bad business anyway.

2 metrics set the limits for effective distribution. Total net profit earned on average over the course of your relationship with a customer, known as Customer Lifetime Value, must exceed the amount spent to acquire a new customer, known as Customer Acquisition Cost.

There are various distribution methods.

Complex Sales require close personal attention on every detail of every deal. It is the only way to sell some of the most valuable products. They work best when you don’t have salesmen at all. Such businesses succeed if they achieve 50% to 100% YoY growth over a decade.

Next, Personal Sales range between deal sizes of $10,000 to $100,000. Challenge is in establishing a process by which a sales team of modest size can move te product to a wider audience.

There are also Distribution Doldrums, known as dead zones. In this area, the product needs a personal sales effort, but at that price point, you don’t have the resources to send an actual person to talk to every customer. Distribution is the hidden bottleneck.

Then, there is Marketing and Advertising. They work fore relatively low0priced products that have mass appeal but lack any method of viral distribution. It can work for startups as well, but only when CAC & CLV make every other distribution channel uneconomical. When you can only afford to spend dozens of dollars acquiring a new customer, you need the biggest megaphone you can find. However, startups should resist competing with bigger companies for PR stunts.

Lastly, there is Viral Marketing. A product is viral if its core functionality encourages users to invite their friends to become users too. If every new user leads to more than one additional user, you can achieve a chain reaction of exponential growth. The ideal viral loop should be quick and frictionless as possible. The first to dominate the most important segment of a market with viral potential will be the last mover. They should aim to get the most valuable users first — Those who need the product dearly and have a higher velocity of money.

One of these methods will be far more powerful than every other for any given business. If you can get just one distribution channel to work, you have a great business.

Alright, so I have good news. The travel plan is all set. I’m kinda excited and nervous at the same time. Nervous because I’m technically not allowed to travel during my internship. But, hey, my boss says it’s fine, so it’s fine. Should be a good change of pace. Hopefully, it’ll do wonders for my NFT work as well. Anyways, see you tomorrow!