Category: Useful tools, services, courses and books

Book with excellent marketing strategy templates: The Four Steps to the Epiphany

Marketing Strategy Template for anyone bringing a product to market, writing a business plan, marketing plan or sales plan in a book!

By: Steven Gary Blank

Publisher: Cafepress.com, USA

Templatesforlife Rating: 4.5 from 5 stars in  Marketing Strategy Template category.

Focus of this book:

  • The Path to Marketing Strategy Disaster: The Product Development Model

  • The Path to Marketing Strategy Epiphany: The Customer Development Model

  • Customer discovery, validation and creation

  • Company Building

Marketing Strategy Template section editors findings : It’s a step-by-step guide to lead a new business project with good examples of what and what not to do. The book is split into six chapters – two introductory chapters then one for each of the four steps in the Customer Development process. Each chapter is long and packed with information. Each chapter concludes with a one page summary that serves as a quick reference guide. The appendix contains a checklist for each step in the Customer Development process as well as a useful bibliography with Blank’s comments.

Main Points for Marketing Strategy Template:

Marketing Strategies fall into one of four basic categories (market types):
• Bringing a new product into an existing market.
• Bringing a new product into a new market.
• Bringing a new product into an existing market and trying to resegment that market as a low-cost entrant.
• Bringing a new product into an existing market and trying to resegment that market as a niche entrant.

Market Type choices affect the way the company will deploy its sales, marketing and financial resources.
Customer Development and Discovery focuses on understanding customer problems and needs.  It is about finding out if there are customers for your idea and if and what they would be willing to pay for it. This must be done by leaving the office and talking to real potential customers and of course this removes the guess work in initial product specification – as the spec. is the founders vision and the minimum working set required to win first customers . Customer Discovery removes pricing risk because prospects tell you what they would be prepared to pay and it removes the hiring and market failure risk of alternate approaches, including the popular “build it and they will come” start-up strategy.
Customer Validation  focuses on developing a sales model that can be replicated. It creates a repeatable sales and marketing road-map based on the lessons learned in selling (not giving it away) to the first early customers. These first two steps validate the assumptions in your business model, that a market exists for your product, who your customers will be, the target buyers, establishes pricing, sales process and channels strategy.
Customer Creation focuses on creating and driving end user demand.

Company Building on transitioning the organization from one designed for learning and discovery to a well-oiled machine engineered for execution.

Marketing Strategy Template section editors conclusions: The Four Steps to the Epiphany is a “must read” for new entrepreneurs, product managers, marketing managers, sales managers and business managers.

Click here to check this book on Amazon!

Book about Decision Tree Templates: The Thinking Manager’s Toolbox

Decision Tree Template For Thinking Managers in a book!

“The Thinking Manager’s Toolbox: Effective Processes for Problem Solving and Decision Making”

By: William J. Altier

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA,

240 pages

Templatesforlife Rating: Best in Decision Tree Templates and Analysis category

Focus of this book:

  • Decision Tree Templates and Analysis

  • Problem Solving

  • Critical Thinking and Reasoning

Main Points of Decision Analysis for Decision Tree Template:

  • The root of the business failure is usually ineffective decision-making processes, and ultimately, bad decisions.
  • With the right set of tools and right people you can overcome any business problem
  • Even a meeting can be a productive tool for solving a problem
  • The major concept steps of Decision Tree Analysis and Template are:
    • Define the Decision Statement: purpose and level. A Decision Statement should start with a verb such as “select,”determine,” or “develop.” The choice of which of these three words to use can be important because it can have a subtle yet significant impact on the process.
    • Establish Objectives:  results, resources, checklists. An objective is a specific, singular description of a desired result or output to be achieved or avoided, or a desired resource or input to be used or avoided.
    • Value Objectives: weight.
    • Generate Alternatives for Decision Tree Template Analysis.
    • Compare and Choose: Satisfaction Scales, Weights x Scores, Total Weighted Scores.

When you need Decision Tree Analysis and Templates:

  • Selecting a location and an organization structure.
  • Determine how to stifle a cash flow problem that is threatening a division’s life.
  • Determine how to standardize widely varying accounting procedures in an organization’s worldwide operations.
  • Develop the optimum specifications for a new machine that will extend the product line’s range.
  • Decide which government agency should administer a new program.
  • Develop an order of attack to resolve a myriad of problems in a new acquisition.
  • Decide how to restructure manufacturing operations to eliminate excess capacity brought about by the implementation of a new technology.
  • Choose which competitors’ products to license in order expand a product line.
  • Decide the best type of sales organization to use in overseas markets.
  • And much more!

Buy the book about Decision Tree Template – The Thinking Manager’s Toolbox on Amazon.