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

2. CUSTOMERS ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT PEOPLE FOR ANY BUSINESS

3. 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?

4. 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?

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

6. 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

7. 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)

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

9. 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?

10. 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

11. 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

12. How is the Value Proposition connected to Customer Segments?

13. 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.

14. Mission Model Canvas

15. 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?

16. Where are you in Life Cycle?

17. 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

18. 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

19. Overall Issue

20. 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?”

21. So

22. 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.

23. Now What?

24. 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

25. Resources
Talkingtohumans.com
bit.ly/llpcdvs