Archive for January, 2007
January 15th, 2007
We went through a brief planning exercise with our clients, and some prospective clients, that several found useful. Since it’s not not too late to do some planning for 2007, here are a few questions that should answer on a single piece of paper (perhaps even a 3×5 card you can carry with you)
- What went well last year? (If you haven’t celebrated do so now)
- How will you build on your 2006 success?
- What key value or attribute of your business do you want to enhance?
- What are one or more activities or initiatives you plan to stop doing in 2007?
- What is your target for growth next year? Are you ready for growth?
- What are the major risks you face in 2007; how will you mitigate them?
January 14th, 2007
Here are three ways for building credibility.
- Referrals
A referral is an introduction to a prospect with an endorsement. A referral allows you to borrow credibility from a trusted third party. They spring from shared success with your customers or former co-workers, someone who knows your potential and can vouch for you or your team’s ability to deliver. Meaningful referrals do not originate from a casual contact, someone you have met and spoken with only a few times: without a history of shared success they cannot substantiate your ability to deliver value.
- Speaking Engagements
As soon as you are in the front of the room doing the talking, most people in the audience will give you the benefit of the doubt as a credible expert. Obviously once you open your mouth you can rapidly undo that perception. A successful speaking engagement combines a clear presentation of your thoughts not only in a strong narrative on a topic that’s of use to potential customers, but also in your answers to real questions from the audience.
- Writing Articles
It may be easier to communicate your knowledge of your prospect’s issues in writing. Especially if you are someone like me who doesn’t enjoy public speaking you should work at the craft of clear business and techncal writing. Most articles these days are presented on a website (e.g. blog entries like this one) or in an email newsletter. In either case you should consider writing in HTML and adding links to provide substantiation of your key citations.
January 12th, 2007
Here’s a good blog post on website content. How Can 10 Simple Articles Change Your Life? In his post Chris Pearson, recounts a story about a friend who creates a website (nothing fancy) but has wonderful content (10 articles). He kills his competition with his content. If you are selling your expertise, try promoting yourself with articles that satisfy your prospects’ needs. They will search the web looking for information and find you. Articles posted on a website can provide leads years after the initial posting. Don’t forget to submit them to industry websites. If your website provides a service, people will find you.
January 11th, 2007
We did an end of year de-briefing session an concluded that that the following changes had a things that had a positive effect on our business in 2006.
“The right way to build a company is to experiment in lots of small ways, so that you have plenty of room to make mistakes and change strategies.” Vinod Khosla
As an old friend used to say “easy to say, very hard to do.” What experiments are you running this year to improve the credibility of your business?
January 10th, 2007
Last night, I attended the January Silicon Valley New Tech Meetup. For those of you who do not know the format of these gatherings, it is very simple. Each group of presenters is allowed five minutes to pitch their offering and then the crowd is allocated five minutes to ask questions.
The first presenters were the founders of inChorus. inChorus has a very complicated technology that leverages the knowledge of its users. Users post projects/problems on the site and people who feel they have knowledge of the subject matter respond with their insight.
The second presenters were the founders of Pinger. It was obvious that their pitch was well rehearsed and timed perfectly. The presentation was articulate, timed, and informative. It was easy to see the problem and the value of their solution. To me, the most compelling part of their business model is that they do not have to partner with any of the cell phone service providers. In a very competitive cell phone market, startups usually design technology that can only be used with the service provider’s permission. I really like the fact the Pinger understands this challenge and designed an application that works around this obstacle.
The third presenters were from ComicVine.com. The presentation was very casual and conversational. The presenter really opened the door for crowd interaction. If you visit their website, you will be blown away by the graphics and the imagination of the sites users.
The last presenter was from PowerReviews.com. I found the site to very similar to consumer digest reports. It is a customer reviews and ratings service. PowerRewiews.com is trying to leverage the power of its users to rank and compare consumer products.
January 9th, 2007
Paul Saffo had the lead quote in my October 18 post on Quotes on Foresight (Understanding the Future) ”Never mistake a clear view for a short distance.” He has so many more trenchant observations on foresight and understanding what’s already happened that I am following up with a post devoted to his quotes and observations. Those of you taking part in the “ruthless reinvention” of Silicon Valley may find some food for thought.
“Best strategy used to be ready, aim, fire. Now the best strategy is ready, fire, steer. Put supplies where you might need them on the journey. Just get into the right neighborhood and you will find the address.”
recounted in How To Mobilize The New Players on the Field by Richard Edelman (note: emphasis added, doesn’t appear in original text).
“Never mistake a clear view for a short distance”
Paul offers an elaboration of this one on his website: technologies take time–as much as twenty years–to move from invention to arrival in our lives. Because we assume the adoption will be more rapid, we inevitably over-esimtate the short-term and under-estimate the long-term impact of new technologies.
War is no longer chess; it’s Go.”
He explains to Maryann Lawlor in “Collaborative Technologies Demand Deep Change”
In chess, the center of the board is the important real estate to control; in the game of Go, the edges are critical to winning. While chess pieces are hierarchical, each stone in Go is equally powerful.
Cheap sensors are shaping this decade, and the poster child is going to be robots.
from “The Ten Coolest Technologies You’ve Never Heard of: The Robot Revolution” (July 7, 2006 in PC Magazine).
The secret to Silicon Valley’s success is that it’s constantly reinventing itself. The secret to it continuing to be a high-tech center is that it is a place that continues to ruthlessly reinvent itself, to ruthlessly drive old companies out of business, start new companies. That turnover is, I think, the secret to our success. We always think about being a success, but there are vastly more failures in the valley than there are successes. And the valley is not really built on the spires of earlier companies, but on their rubble.
From April 1997 interview for the Tech Museum The Revolutionaries: Paul Saffo
There are no regular people. There’re people we tend to remember the names of, and we seem to have this fascination with deifying certain individuals. At some level, how do I say it? Look at any Silicon Valley company, and people instantly say, this company, oh! The head of that company; they’re so smart. But the company isn’t one person; the company’s a team of people and for everyone who conventional wisdom says a genius business leader or a successful entrepreneur or whatever, there’re hundreds of other people who’re just as extraordinary whose names we don’t know.
From a 2006 SF Chronicle Interview ”Institute for the Future / On the Record”
I don’t think information overload is a function of the volume of information. It’s a derivative of the volume of information plus the sense-making tools you have. Think about the rise of info-graphics in newspapers. Those were sense-making tools to help people (absorb information). You can bookmark your Web pages. Now we have things like (the Web site) Del.icio.us that allow you to create tags to share and organize Web pages. In my class, we’re using a wiki (a Web page that is like an open bulletin board). The rise of Wikipedia (an online encyclopedia)—that’s a sense-making tool. These are tools that help us make sense of information. I think it was Samuel Johnson who said, “There are two kinds of information in this world: that what you know and that what you know where to get.” The tools help the latter, and that’s what keeps us from going nuts. The sense of overload comes from the gap between that sudden jump in volume (of information) and the tools we have to make sense of it.
January 8th, 2007
This was a principle for systems design suggested in a talk I heard 15-20 years ago. I can no longer remember the speaker’s name but I remember that he was in the disk drive business. Google has proven unavailing in sourcing it so it was probably an original insight with this engineer that hasn’t gained wider currency.
It should. People Manage People, Tools Manage Data
When I went back to Cisco for my second tour of duty in 1998 (I had been there from 1990 to 1994; the second time I was able to last until mid-2003 before I went back to being an entrepreneur) I was surprised at the number of workflow systems that were being designed and deployed to limit input and decrease options that could be requested. People were instructing IT to design interfaces that would do things they would never be so rude to do face to face, in e-mail, or over the phone. The designers were always surprised when they (or their management chain) continued to get e-mail and phone calls because people wouldn’t limit themselves to the options on the web form.
These were workflow systems and request tracking systems for what had been negotiations. So what’s my point? Anytime you set out to manage employees, partners, or customers with inflexible systems to channel their activities don’t be surprised when it doesn’t quite work out like you planned.
I am a huge fan of defect tracking systems, source code management systems, and any tool that allows you to get a better handle on the data thrown off by your actions. But be careful of trying to use software to “manage people.”
Winston Churchill observed that “We shape our buildings, and forever afterwards our buildings shape us.” So it is with our internal control and scorekeeping mechanisms. Be careful not to abdicate your responsibilities here.
January 6th, 2007
Jon Winokur has published a number of good books, including “The Portable Curmudgeon” and “Advice to Writers,” and was interviewed September 2006 by Guy Kawasaki, which prompted me to add his most recent, “Encyclopedia Neurotica” to my Amazon cart (where books can linger for months or years). I was frankly a little disappointed, but found a half dozen nuggets–one for each of my readers–that founding teams might find thought provoking.
affluenza
Virus of affluence that psychotherapist Jessie H. O’Neill defines as “the collective addictions, character flaws, psychological wounds, neuroses, and behavioral disorders caused or exacerbated by the presence of, or desire for, wealth.” Affluenza victims, regardless of their socioeconomic level, falsely believe that money can solve all their problems.
“Our Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s jobs with yesterday’s tools.” –Marshall McLuhan
“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
–E. B. White
“In the real dark night of the soul, it is always 3 o’clock in the morning.”
The Crack Up, F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Mid-life crisis is what happens when you get to the top of the ladder and discover that it’s against the wrong wall.”
–Joseph Campbell
“The struggle to reach the top is itself enough to fulfill the heart of man. One must believe that Sisyphus is happy.”
The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus
January 5th, 2007
Theresa: my 2007 New Year’s Resolution is to do more public speaking. Given how nervous I get speaking in public, I’m going to start with baby steps and talk at our upcoming workshop, Getting More Customers. Hopefully I will have enough nerve to do a joint talk later this year.
Francis: I also want to get better at public speaking but since Theresa took that one I will take a different one. I plan to read the books mentioned in Sean’s talk ”Twelve Books for the Busy CEO” this year.
Sean: focus more on the positive accomplishments of clients and prospects. I think it’s an occupational hazard as a consulant to try and “add value” by pointing out where folks are making mistakes or have problems. It’s just as important to acknowledge what’s working that we can help them build on. I blogged about this in Hey Wait a Minute, That’s Me in the “Before” Picture but it’s worth more focus in 2007.
January 4th, 2007
I had the good fortune to attend the SVASE CXO Forum Dec-6-06 where Peter Bakonyvari, Vice President of Sales at JPMorgan SymPro, explored some of the practical realities in building a sales team.
Bakonyvari’s made the point that the first 90 days were critical for determining whether a new sales hire was successful. It is important to set realistic expectations, put them in writing, and focus on shared success metrics that are easy to measure and agreed to by the salesperson. He offered the following timeline as a basis for getting up to speed on a complex product:
- 30 days: learn product and be able to communicate value
- 60 days: start calling and get in front of prospects, start pipeline
- 90 days: should have prospects who are developing
He shared that he was able to hire successfully about 50% of the time and that is was important to cut losses (”take no prisoners”) and not accept excuses after 90 days.
James Connor, who runs the SVASE CXO forum, offered three simple tests that any sales candidate should be able to pass before being hired.
- Show me a spreadsheet that demonstrates the ROI for a product.
- Write me a short article on something you know about.
- Call me and speak on the telephone.
If the candidate doesn’t have some facility with Excel, writing ability, and good telephone skills, then you should think very hard about extending an offer.
Some comments from the audience included
- Be careful of a VP of sales from a large company as your first hire
if you want someone who will “get out there.” You’ve hired a general
when you need a soldier.
- Understand when you need a business development person instead a sales person. A sales person needs a stable product with a proven sales process and works with a quota. Business development creates new opportunities and is measured on the markets that are identified that can be exploited.
- Some sales hires will just work for base as long as you let them.
- The marketeer makes the phone ring then sales guy answers it
- It can be useful on a larger team to have someone who can cold call and generate leads
- Expect to spend more than $100K in base for an enterprise sales person, don’t expect to find anyone worth hiring who will work on 100% commission.
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