Scouting, Connecting and Building Industrial Relationships to Grow Membership VentureWell July 28, 2017

CUSTOMERS ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT PEOPLE FOR ANY BUSINESS

Q: Is My Center a Business? Is it here for the benefit of customers? Does it have paying customers? Do I need to invest resources to maintain it? Do I need to manage relationships to make it run? Does it require vision/leadership? Is there a succession plan?

My Center is a Hobby if... It costs more to run than it takes in It would die without me Customers/Members needs come second to mine Customers?

What is the number one reason why a business fails? YOU BUILD SOMETHING NOBODY CARES ABOUT

What Business is my Center in? Generating proposals and expecting to obtain funding for cutting edge research Servicing industry members on what they won’t or can’t afford to do on their alone Engineer/Scientist minting and recruiting IP licensing Technology Commercialization Corporate networking Company-launching Anti-antitrust Workshop delivery

Business Value Proposition Value proposition is a clear statement that Explains how your product/service solves customers' problems or improves their situation (relevancy) Delivers specific benefits (quantified value) Tells the ideal customer why they should buy from you and not from the competition (unique differentiation)

A VALUE PROPOSITION IS KEY TO ATTRACT, CONNECT AND BUILD MEMBERSHIP (CUSTOMERS)

Core Value Proposition Considerations: Who are my customers (beneficiaries)? How are they segmented? What needs do they have? What problems are they trying to solve? What opportunities are they pursuing? Why do they care about you? How can they derive value from you?

Who Are My Center Customers (beneficiaries)? Two Primary Customer Segments (6 sub-segments): People that sit on my IAB (Members) For Profit Non Profit State/Local/Federal People within my Academic Institution Administration Faculty Researchers

User Influencer Recommender Decision maker Economic buyer Saboteur Customers or Beneficiaries are not institutions but ‘individuals.’ Am I talking to right person? User Influencer Recommender Decision maker Economic buyer Saboteur

How is the Value Proposition connected to Customer Segments?

How can I connect the Value Proposition to all my Center functions? A Business or Mission Model Canvas is a strategic management and lean startup template for developing new or documenting existing business models.

Mission Model Canvas

Your Value is ever-changing Does technology evolve or change? Do new threats appear on the horizon? Do your customers change? Do markets change? Are there new entrants into you market?

Where are you in Life Cycle?

What is the number one reason why a business fails? YOU BUILD SOMETHING NOBODY CARES ABOUT also known as: You do not deliver a benefit/value that enough customers want

Typical excuses/answers when membership is low: The members were too cheap Have you heard of this thing called the recession? We ran out of resources before we got traction The IP policy in our industry is handled differently Our administration undermined our efforts to attract members The Industry Members couldn’t understand the value we were providing them

Overall Issue

More typical initial members’ feedback “We don’t care about XYZ research” “What you have isn’t what we need” “This topic is dead in industry” “IUCRC are nice, but” “What do you mean a Center for Multifunctional and Parallel Processing of Discrete…?” “Why would I work with the IUCRC, I already have a project with your university?”

So

What We Need? You must clearly understand what your customers/beneficiaries need and want. Your value proposition must clearly connect to IAB member’s needs. You must offer something unique and avoid selling an unclear membership value.

Now What?

The Charge 5 tables: Planning through year 3 2 tables: year 4- 6 1 table: year 7-15 One breakout room (Heath and Dorn) What new value propositions can I use to attract and grow membership? – Use VentureWell Value Proposition Exercise form. At the end of the session each table will report out their findings

Resources Talkingtohumans.com bit.ly/llpcdvs