The Phantom Sales Forecast – Failing at Customer Validation

Startup CEO's can't delegate sales and expect it to happen. Customer Validation needs to have the CEO actively involved.

Here's an example in a direct sales channel.

Customer Development Diagnostics over Lunch

A VC asked me to have lunch with the CEO of  a startup building cloud-based enterprise software. (Boy did I feel like Rip Van Winkle.) The board was getting nervous as the company was missing its revenue plan.

These lunches always start with the CEO looking like they had much better...