When you coach teams that try to get their hands on their first business modeling session you start to think that they use this as an excersize in filling in the blanks of all the 9 corresponding pieces.
When I coach these teams, i start to tell them about the big picture. Show them some common models, such as Google, or Starbucks. It is incredibly hard for some teams to come up with a business model which they feel totally comfortable with. Some people within teams are more sales driven, or have strong opinions about who the first customer should be. I once spoke a team on Startup Weekend that wanted to go with corporates as their launching customers but had a straight-up consumer product. Personally I would never go with big corporates as my first customers, or at least search for a segment of buyers within these companies but they felt comfortable they could push the product into big corporate mode.
So, back to the business model. Think of a product you like which as mass adoption within a corporate: how have they got their? It cannot do anything harm to try and replicate their business model onto the canvas. Try this, and replicate for instance Slack, Jira or Salesforce into a canvas. See what comes up? See anything you like doing? Well, just grab it: apply it to your canvas.
Love what you do
Sometimes, I see teams make choices based on what they are supposed to be doing, instead of doing the things they actually like. If you make a canvas that is sales-heavy, you have to love sales. If you do not have anyone in the team that is willing to (cold) call every dream customer you are after: you just might hit a bump in the BMC. The BMC is not only about what is right: it’s also a key factor that you and your team are able to pull it off.
