2024 Pricing Survey

Lightspeed is conducting an anonymous pricing benchmarking survey. Usage-based pricing has become increasingly common in the past couple of years. This survey seeks to explore how startups view the trade-offs of usage-based economics and its effects on revenue models and customer preferences.

Upcoming PLG Workshop

Join us at our upcoming Product-Led Growth Workshop with PLG expert Hila Qu on August 30, 2023.

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Mar 29, 2023
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Seed Workshop: Pitching & Origin Story

Your origin story is a key tool in educating the customer on your product: what it is, why it exists, why you were the founder/team to build it, and how it relates to the customer’s pain. A well-crafted origin story and pitch directly impact your sales process efficiency. In this workshop, we covered the ideal structure and real-world examples of how to optimize your customer pitch.

March 29 Seed Workshop

Hosts

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Speakers

Peter Wooster

Advisor

Luke Beseda

Partner, Seed @ Lightspeed

Peter Wooster

Advisor

Luke Beseda

Partner, Seed @ Lightspeed

Event Recap & Takeaways

In this workshop, Sales and Customer Success expert Peter Wooster breaks down how to develop your pitch and customer discovery questions.

The session workbook can be found here.


Sales Process Components

At each stage of the sales process you'll need to leverage two main tools:

Compelling Pitch

A pitch feeds  your prospecting emails, discovery calls, and is the backbone of your presentation and demo. By the end of each interaction you and the potential customer should have a mutual understanding if your product is a match. 

Discovery questions

An inquiry technique that helps determine customize the sales process by understanding a customer’s key pain points.


Pitching

Have a 30-second and 2-minute version of your pitch, and customize it for each customer's Persona and Buyer type.

Determine Your Product Type

Before creating a pitch, the first thing you need to determine is the type of product you have. 

Disrupter
  • Selling into an existent marketplace 
  • Prospects are aware of the problem you are solving
  • Competitors exist

For disruptors, discovery can flow quite well and may require a more active style of sales engagement to figure out the current problems in the potential customer’s workflow. 

Evangelist
  • Category creator
  • Prospects may not be aware they have a problem or that the problem is solvable
  • Competitors unlikely to exist

For evangelists, there are two sales cycles:The first is to convince potential customers to understand the premise of the problem you are trying to solve and to acknowledge that they have this problem. The second is to persuade them to evaluate your product as a solution to their problem.

Build the Pitch

Once you determine your product type, arrange  your pitch in the order below. By following this structure, your Discovery  questions and the responses will be more  relevant, leading to a customized and streamlined sales process.  

Build the Pitch Chart

Adapting Your Pitch 

When developing an Origin Story, you adapt it based on two Personas; 

  • Who you’re talking to: User/Champion, Leadership, Operations, Financial, Technical
  • What Buyer type they are: Active Buyer, Passive Buyer, Cold Prospect, Re-pitch 

Best Practices

  • Verbally deliver the pitch: Capture your audience’s attention by delivering  your pitch verbally. 
  • Have a pause moment: Make sure you have a mutual understanding of the product before you go into the Discovery question phase. 
  • Say the pitch to anyone new: If you have new attendees in a presentation, repeat the pitch so they can hear your version of it firsthand. You may find the new stakeholders have different pain points that you should address. 

Discovery Questions

Discovery questions allow you to identify customer needs, customize the sales processes, determine next steps, and anticipate future objections.

You can create discovery questions by doing the following: 

  • Determine Practical Blockers: Identify the criteria for disqualifying a prospect, such as a critical technical barrier or lack of pain your product can address.
  • Define Product Competencies: Clearly define the value your product can provide, either unique to you or better than a competitor.
  • Decide Strong / Weak Answers: Hold yourself accountable by deciding what is a strong or weak response before talking to prospects.

Workshop Next Steps

  • Create or update your pitch (use the workbook for guidance)
  • Create or update your Discovery Questions (use the workbook for guidance) 
  • Practice with Peter — free 30 minute feedback session — contact Luke@lsvp.com

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