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Take these slides with a grain of salt. Dave's slides are decent for low-touch symmetric high-volume consumer web sites (B2C). Not so great for B2B or asymmet

Take these slides with a grain of salt. Dave's slides are decent for low-touch symmetric high-volume consumer web sites (B2C). Not so great for B2B or asymmetric businesses.

pclark 17y ago
Acquisition, Retention, Referral and Revenue apply to almost every business...
- wavesplash 17y ago
  Very loosely. You have to understand the nature of a business before you start prescribing metrics to watch. A manufacturer wouldn't use these as success metrics. If we just focus on web-tech we're still left with a buch of questions: Is the business B2C, B2B, Symmetric (User pays) or Asymmetric (3rd party pays - e.g. Google users vs. Google advertisers)? For asymmetric businesses or high-dollar ($10k+/sale) enterprise/B2B most of these metrics are good-intentioned but likely to send the business astray. For example: in low-volume/high-dollar B2B and most enterprise, 98% of the time needs to be spent focused on Average Sales Price (ASP) and Average Time to Close (ATC). To minimize ATC and maximize ASP you're trying to listen closely to pain points, determine champions, help win cross department fiefdom battles, get the purchasing department to pay before your company runs out of cash, etc. Dave's suggested metrics start coming into play for symmetric low-dollar subscriptions to thousands and 10s of thousands. These are the types of markets he understands well, and that's aok, but that's not everyone's business and the advise should be taken with a grain of salt.
davemc500hats 17y ago
agreed, primarily my talks focus on consumer Internet biz models where you can collect customer reaction to features & UI quickly, in order to make decisions. it applies somewhat, but less well, to long-latency businesses that involve enterprise products / offline sales. and yes, I know the slides violate every rule of good presentation design (color, bullets, etc). it's intentional, and I'm pretty immature. seriously.

Take these slides with a grain of salt. Dave's slides are decent for low-touch symmetric high-volume consumer web sites (B2C). Not so great for B2B or asymmetric businesses.

pclark 17y ago

Acquisition, Retention, Referral and Revenue apply to almost every business...

wavesplash 17y ago
Very loosely. You have to understand the nature of a business before you start prescribing metrics to watch. A manufacturer wouldn't use these as success metrics. If we just focus on web-tech we're still left with a buch of questions: Is the business B2C, B2B, Symmetric (User pays) or Asymmetric (3rd party pays - e.g. Google users vs. Google advertisers)? For asymmetric businesses or high-dollar ($10k+/sale) enterprise/B2B most of these metrics are good-intentioned but likely to send the business astray. For example: in low-volume/high-dollar B2B and most enterprise, 98% of the time needs to be spent focused on Average Sales Price (ASP) and Average Time to Close (ATC). To minimize ATC and maximize ASP you're trying to listen closely to pain points, determine champions, help win cross department fiefdom battles, get the purchasing department to pay before your company runs out of cash, etc. Dave's suggested metrics start coming into play for symmetric low-dollar subscriptions to thousands and 10s of thousands. These are the types of markets he understands well, and that's aok, but that's not everyone's business and the advise should be taken with a grain of salt.

davemc500hats 17y ago

agreed, primarily my talks focus on consumer Internet biz models where you can collect customer reaction to features & UI quickly, in order to make decisions. it applies somewhat, but less well, to long-latency businesses that involve enterprise products / offline sales. and yes, I know the slides violate every rule of good presentation design (color, bullets, etc). it's intentional, and I'm pretty immature. seriously.