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Since the last time I wrote (part 1), a lot of things have changed at Käuferportal. Our growth has been tremendous over the last 3 months. When I started in July 1st, we had a team of 15 people. Now, we are 25. The biggest challenge that comes along with this growth is how to guarantee the same quality to our buyers and our retailer, especially when introducing new products on our platform.

As I am responsible for launching new products and services on our platform, I will now outline certain steps we go through before the first revenues are generated.

Step 1: How often do people search for this product in the web?

This is one metric for determining the market potential for this product/service. The most basic, but rather straightforward tool to determine the search volume is the Google Adwords External Keyword Tool. This tool gives a good indicator of how often keywords related to this product are searched for on google in the last month. Although rather limited in its possibilities, the Keyword Tool provides you with the insight whether it makes sense to launch this product at all.

Step 2: Does it fit to the current product portfolio?

Although this sounds like “corporate lingo”, in our current state one has to see where synergies in the acquisition of retailers can be realized. Everyone who tried to make somebody to do something on the phone, knows how hard it is to convince the other side, especially if the other side doesn’t even know what you are doing. Convincing the German Mittelstand to join Käuferportal is probably one of the hardest tasks I ever experienced (even harder than convincing my girlfriend to go to Tarantino movies)). Realizing synergies in the acquisition of retailers is easiest if you have “fans” that buy your leads in other categories and offer them the same quality in other categories. Everyone who ever listened to his marketing professor should know that a new customer is 4 or 5 times more expensive to acquire than an existing customer.

Step 3: What prices can you charge?

Every Döner shop and every copy machine retailer knows that, in the long term, markets only function if buyers can find the supply they want to buy for an appropriate price. Might sound like the opposite of rocket science, but how to find a price for a good that was not available before? The simple answer to this question is that both sides have to earn money at those prices. So, when does it make sense for our retailers to use our service in the future? The answer is that it they earn more money than they spent to acquire those customers. One of my first successfully introduced product were chair lifts (Treppenlifte). The “Treppenlift Business” as we call it here is quite remarkable in its high provisions and online affinity.Would you have guessed that 80% of all Treppenlift are sold online? Finding a fixed price in a provision based business is of particular difficulty as one has to guess the rate of acquisition per retailer which is a rather difficult thing to do,especially as most sales men would rather die before telling you their sales numbers.   However, I’m still in doubt how to determine the different ingredients of this formula properly. If you have any proposals, feel free to reply to this post or write me an email.

Next time I’ll supplement this list and let you know which formula will serve as an orientation for setting prices in the future.

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Tags: Käuferportal, Robert Heesen, start-up

Dieser Artikel wurde am Mittwoch, 04. November 2009 um 00:45 erstellt und ist in der Kategorie Entrepreneurs, Karriere abgelegt. Antworten zu diesem Artikel können durch den RSS 2.0-Feed verfolgt werden. Beides, Kommentare und Pings, sind im Moment geschlossen.