143

c13a 143 1 March 2017 11:15 AM

Bonus Topic

Windows of Opportunity and Triggers

This is new material that was not covered in Disciplined Entrepreneurship.

WhaT are WindoWs of opporTuniTY and Triggers?

A Window of Opportunity is a time period in which your target customer (end user, economic buyer, and/or champion) will be particularly open to considering your offering. A Trigger is a specific action you take within that Window of Opportunity to create an urgency and/or strong incentive for the customer to act.

WhY are TheY imporTanT and WhY noW?

The Process to Acquire a Paying Customer is the foundation of your sales process, but you must understand that your customers are not equally predisposed to buying your product regardless of when you start the sales process. Knowing when your customer is most open to the elements of the acquisition process is an important consideration in effectively and efficiently executing your sales funnel to a successful conclusion.

144 Disciplined Entrepreneurship Workbook

c13a 144 1 March 2017 11:15 AM

Know your Windows of Opportunity and take advantage of them with well-designed Triggers—timing is crucial!

process guide

One of the biggest challenges for any company, especially a startup, is initial customer adoption of their product, which is why you need to spend so much time dissecting that process and improving it. Getting the 1,001st customer after having 1,000 customers may not be easy, but I can assure you that it is almost always much easier than getting the first real customer. In this case, by a “real” customer I mean someone who is not a relative or a friend or a technological enthusiast who will buy one of everything. Instead, a real customer is someone who started with a clean slate and then, because of a customer pain/opportunity, subsequently found out about your product and chose to buy it to solve that customer pain/opportunity.

To get that first customer, you must overcome an enormous amount of inertia because it is sig-nificantly easier for the customer to not buy your product and keep doing what he or she is currently doing. The status quo is an extremely powerful force to overcome, especially before a product is widely accepted and people change their purchasing habits accordingly.

There exists a great analogy from physics. Isaac Newton’s first law of motion begins by stating that bodies at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an external force. The potential customer is initially at rest and will stay so unless you find a way to start the process. Finding that catalyst to action is often the most important step in the Process to Acquire a Paying Customer—and often the most underrated.

Bonus Topic: Windows of Opportunity and Triggers 145

c13a 145 1 March 2017 11:15 AM

Great marketers, especially in consumer markets, have known for a long time about two concepts that will help you crystallize the catalysts to action—Windows of Opportunity and Triggers.1

A Window of Opportunity is a time period in which your target end user, your economic buyer, and/or your champion will be particularly open to considering purchasing your product. Examples of common Windows of Opportunity include:

• Seasonality (selling lemonade in summer and Christmas wreaths in winter)

• Crisis (e.g., blackout, security breach) or impending potential crisis (e.g., forecast for a storm, the potential Y2K computer bug)

• End of fiscal year (extremely relevant for business, but also for some consumers due to taxes)

• Budget planning cycle

• Life transitions (e.g., graduation, first job, first home, pregnancy)

• Change in leadership (e.g., company hires a new chief information officer)

• Change in regulation (e.g., enactment of the Affordable Care Act)

• Searching the Internet and finding your product (more on this later)

A Window of Opportunity only identifies a time period when you have a much better than nor-mal chance to start the acquisition process, but it does not start the process for you. Now you need to apply that external force to get the customer moving. That is what I call a Trigger.

1 Charles Duhigg discusses Windows of Opportunity and Triggers extensively (albeit with different names) in his book The Power of Habits, especially when he discusses the success that the superstore Target has had in using product purchase history to predict future purchases. Duhigg profiles one infamous case where Target began sending pregnancy-related advertisements to a teenage girl, prompting the girl’s father to angrily complain to the store manager—only to take it back a few days later when he found out that his daughter was, in fact, pregnant, and Target had figured it out before he had.

When you start, your customer is like an object at rest. Getting the customer to take the first step toward acquiring your product is the hardest step, so it requires special attention.

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A Trigger is an action you take within the Window of Opportunity to create an urgency and/or strong incentive for the target end user, economic buyer, and/or champion to act, starting the Process to Acquire a Paying Customer. A well-designed Trigger also increases the odds that the customer will make it through your sales funnel and acquire your product. Examples of Triggers include:

1. A salesperson suddenly appearing, in person, on the phone, or in an online chat interface

2. Offering a discount that expires after a short period of time

3. Indications of scarcity of supply

4. Limited time availability to join a special community

5. Special offer of additional value to reward quick decision

6. Clear action that will help you avoid a disaster—such as a security assessment to avoid a dev-astating cybersecurity breach that just hit a competitor and is making headlines today

These simple concepts apply to almost every product and are extremely well known by all large corporations like Target, Google, Amazon, and Procter and Gamble. Ironically, they are even more important to entrepreneurs, who face more inertia, but these fundamental concepts are generally little known or utilized in this community. In my work, I have seen that even a well-defined Decision-Making Unit (DMU) and Process to Acquire a Paying Customer can fail if the entrepreneur does not understand their Windows of Opportunity and does not set up effective Triggers against them.

Triggers are specific actions you take within the Window of Opportunity.

Bonus Topic: Windows of Opportunity and Triggers 147

c13a 147 1 March 2017 11:15 AM

Understanding and utilizing Windows of Opportunity and Triggers help tremendously in kicking off the sales process and getting your customers to buy your product.

general exercises To undersTand concepT

1. Seasonal example: When is the best Window of Opportunity to sell swimsuits? What Triggers do stores put in place to take advantage of that Window? Can you suggest some other creative Triggers that a store could try?

2. Good examples to be copied: Review the examples in the table on the next two pages and come up with other situations where the same approach could be applied.

148

c13a 148 1 March 2017 11:15 AM

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149

c13a 149 1 March 2017 11:15 AM

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150

c13a 150 1 March 2017 11:15 AM

Work

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Now

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151

c13a 151 1 March 2017 11:15 AM

4W

hat:

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n:

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:

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hat:

Whe

n:

Why

:

152 Disciplined Entrepreneurship Workbook

c13a 152 1 March 2017 11:15 AM

Which Window of Opportunity will you target first? Why?

What are potential Triggers for your chosen Window of Opportunity?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Which of these Triggers will you test first? Why?

What is a cost-effective and rapid way to test your hypothesis on your chosen Window of Oppor-tunity and Trigger? How will you measure its effectiveness?