Posts filed under 'tshafer'
August 20th, 2010
Second Derivative’s Great Demo! seminar on September 15, 2010 helps frustrated sales, marketing and presales professionals and entrepreneurs improve their skills and gain dramatic results. Peter Cohan helps organizations like Keynote Systems and Phreesia put the “Wow!” into their demos to make them crisp, compelling and successful.
“I believe everyone on the team will find that your training and demo workflow has been extremely effective – we are confident that we’ve closed business directly as a result of applying Great Demo! practices. The Sales Engineers started using what they learned in the training and were amazed at the results! Their respective Account Managers were so amazed they all went out and bought the book, now we will be doing a training for the whole sales force!” reported Robert Hughes, Global Director of Solution Consulting at Keynote Sytems, the leading provider of on-demand test and measurement products for mobile communications and the Internet.
“Peter Cohan’s Great Demo method really works. It helped us win DEMOgod, and it has allowed us to explain our offering much more clearly to prospects.” Chaim Indig, CEO, of Phreesia, the leader in patient check-in, with a network of thousands of clinicians nationwide.
Co-sponsered by SKMurphy, the Great Demo! Workshop is now available in an open enrollment format. These Workshops are perfect for individuals looking for sales and demo skills training.
During the full day Workshop at the Moorpark Hotel in San Jose, California, Peter Cohan will present tips and best practices for demos whether face to face, in a webinar, as a screencast, or as a self-running demo.
This highly interactive, practice-driven training class outlines a framework for the creation and delivery of improved demos and presentations to enable increased success in the marketing, sales, and deployment of software and related products. Attendees can also bring their demo and have it critiqued.
Limited spaces are available on a first come, first serve basis. To reserve a seat in the seminar please contact us by visiting http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2010/04/14/great-demo-workshop-on-sept-15-2010/
ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Peter Cohan, Principal at The Second Derivative
Website: www.SecondDerivative.com, Community Web Site: www.DemoGurus.com
Peter Cohan is the founder and a principal of The Second Derivative, a consultancy focused on helping software organizations improve their sales and marketing results. In July 2004, he enabled and began moderating DemoGurus®, a community web exchange dedicated to helping sales and marketing teams improve their software demonstrations. In 2003, he authored Great Demo!, a book that provides methods to create and execute compelling demonstrations. The 2nd edition of Great Demo! was published March 2005.
July 21st, 2010
This summer vacation I will be reading Teaming Up: The Small Business Guide to Collaborating With Others to Boost Your Earnings and Expand Your Horizons by Paul Edwards (Author), and Sarah Edwards (Author)
Looking for a business book to read on upcoming summer trip? Here are a couple more ideas:
July 13th, 2010
Gone are the days when you could read a couple of journals and get a good idea of what is going on in an industry. Today, the number of great sources has exploded.
The challenge is to manage all of these sources, fortunately almost all of them now provide a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed. Tools called feed aggregators merge the information from a set of RSS feeds into a single page that is, in effect, a “personalized newspaper.” This newspaper is always up to date from the latest blog posts and articles, reducing the time and effort needed to check for new information from websites, blogs, and news sites.
Once subscribed to a feed, an aggregator is able to check for new content at user-determined intervals and retrieve the update. One of the problems with news aggregators is that the volume of articles can be overwhelming. As a solution, many feed readers allow users to tag each feed with one or more keywords which can be used to sort and filter the available articles into easily navigable categories.
I want to share my experience with using these familiar innovative news aggregators tools which allows me to build a collection of “industry-specific personalized newspapers”.
Survey of tools: Google reader, Netvibes, InfoMinder, and Eqentia
There are a number of simple tools like Google reader, Netvibes, FeedDemon, or Bloglines. These feed aggregators are good at monitoring known RSS feeds. These tools offer very little assistance in finding new sources of information. Also, they quickly fall apart when sorting through news items like press releases where duplicate copies show up on many different sources. Sorting through duplicates is a waste of time and it makes it more likely for you to miss unique pieces of news.
These simple readers can be configured to display headlines, summaries, or the entire article. And, they may be configured as to how many articles to display. They don’t act like actual newspapers in that they will display the news for a given blog regardless whether the reader has seen it before. For example one of my Google reader pages, still shows news from 2006, because that was the last time that blog was updated. I have seen the article a hundred of times but Google reader does not remove it. Between the duplicate article issue and the lack of real-time updates of latest information, I have moved away from using Google reader type functionality.
Aggregators which offer enhanced functionality
Tools like iMorph’s InfoMinder offer more functionality to assist with duplicate article issue and focuses on real-time updates. Imorph’s InfoMinder is a hosted subscription service that allows you to track changes of web pages, blogs, RSS feeds and wikis.
I use InfoMinder because it combines Google Reader functionality with Google Alerts functionality to follow hundreds of vertical industry sources. Each day it sends me an email digest of all changes for the sites I am tracking. I can click through to a version of any of those pages to see all the changes since my last visit if needed.
Another tool that I use is Eqentia. Like Google reader, Eqentia allows me to consolidate RSS feeds. And like InfoMinder, Eqentia sends me a single email digest. Eqentia does a good job eliminating duplicate articles. Additionally, it has a knowledge portal that extracts key elements like company, people, subject, issues and regions. Filter and drilling down allows you to quickly find the latest news on a particular person, company or subject you are in search of.
Imorph’s InfoMinder consolidates multiple website and blog search tracking into a single email digest and continues to notify me of the latest updates of each site. Equentia forwards a single email digest, eliminates the same (duplicate) articles produced by multiple streams, and provides additional knowledge settings which I set up to get specific information needed.
By using these specialized news aggregators, I now have gathered a large collection of “industry-specific personalized newspapers” and can quickly manage thousands of informative sites. This collection of personalized newspapers allows me to search for specific knowledge tracking, competitive intelligence, media monitoring and enhancing SEO quickly. I use the tools to track industries and maintain thought leadership.
Resources:
- Great Video by CommonCraft that explains RSS very well http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU
July 2nd, 2010
In the course of my networking I meet a lot of people and get a lot of business cards – every once in a while I will get a card that really stands out.
Here are three cards that lead to deeper discussion about their company and products.
| Not only is this business card unique, it is a great way to show off that WhereIsNow always has the most current information.
The WhereIsNow service ensures that the contact information is always current.
No longer do you have out of date phone numbers or email. By simply searching with key search = 2 18, updated contact for Daniele Idini is available. |
 |
The second one is a unique business card from GeekStack, a company that produces an online trading card game with a science and technology theme. The cards feature the history, people, concepts, discoveries, and events in fields like Math, Chemistry, Physics, Engineering, and Biology.
The final business card is also for GeekStack and makes creative use of mathematical symbols in a typeface logo, it’s a memorable way for Peter Christensen to introduce his company. Front and Back are shown.
Guarantee you, if you were handed any of these cards you would be on their website checking them out. Let me know if you have favorite a business card.
If you have a cool business card mail us a copy and we will run another post when we get a few.
April 14th, 2010
Create and Deliver Surprisingly Compelling Software Demonstrations
“Do The Last Thing First” — the recipe for a Great Demo!
When: Wednesday, Sept 15, 2010 8 am – 5 pm
Where: Moorpark Hotel, 4241 Moorpark Ave, San Jose CA 95129
Cost: $590
Before Aug 28: $566
This is an interactive workshop with Peter Cohan geared especially for you who demonstrate B-to-B software to your customer and channels. Bring a copy of your demo and be prepared to present it — we’ll help you turn it into a surprisingly compelling demo!
This seminar outlines a framework for the creation and delivery of improved demos and presentations to enable increased success in the marketing, sale, and deployment of software and related products. Whether it’s face to face, in a webinar, as a screencast, or as a self-running demo the ability to present the key benefits of your software product is essential to generating prospect interest and ultimately revenue. Peter Cohan of The Second Derivative gives us the recipe for a Great Demo!
“I am confident that with the insights gained from your workshop we will land more customers in fewer iterations.”
Lav Pachuri, CEO, Xleron Inc.
“Peter Cohan’s Great Demo method really works. It helped us win DEMOgod, and it has allowed us to explain our offering much more clearly to prospects.”
Chaim Indig, CEO, Phreesia
(See “DEMOgod Winner Phreesia Praises Peter Cohan Training“)
ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Peter Cohan, Principal at Second Derivative
Community Web Site: www.DemoGurus.com
Peter Cohan is the founder and a principal of The Second Derivative, a consultancy focused on helping software organizations improve their sales and marketing results. In July 2004, he enabled and began moderating DemoGurus®, a community web exchange dedicated to helping sales and marketing teams improve their software demonstrations. In 2003, he authored Great Demo!, a book that provides methods to create and execute compelling demonstrations. The 2nd edition of Great Demo! was published March 2005.
Before The Second Derivative, Peter founded the Discovery Tools® business unit at Symyx Technologies, Inc., where he grew the business from an empty spreadsheet into a $30 million operation. Prior to Symyx, Peter served in marketing, sales, and management positions at MDL Information Systems, a leading provider of scientific information management software. Peter currently serves on the Board of Directors for Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc. and the board of advisors for Excellin, Inc. He holds a degree in chemistry.
Peter has experience as an individual contributor, manage and senior management in marketing, sales, and business development. He has also been, and continues to be, a customer.
Agenda:
- 8:00 AM Breakfast & Registration
- 8:30 AM Workshop begins
- Noon Lunch
- 1 PM Workshop Continues
- 5 PM Wrap up
Seating is Limited These are intensive sessions and we ask that you arrive at least 15 minutes before 8:30AM start time to ensure you will have a seat and won’t disrupt the session once it is underway.
For more information: Theresa Shafer 408-252-9676 events@skmurphy.com
February 5th, 2010
Rescheduled due to illness to April 9, 2010 8:15 – 5:00opm
Special Offer for Groups and Organization Members
Discounts are available for members of Bootstrappers Breakfast, Business Marketing Association, Women In Consulting, and organizations sending three or more employees: please contact us for discount codes.
Create and Deliver Surprisingly Compelling Software Demonstrations
“Do The Last Thing First” — the recipe for a Great Demo!
When: Wednesday March 17, 2010 8:15 am – 5:00 pm
Rescheduled due to illness to April 9, 2010 8:15 – 5:00opm
Where: Moorpark Hotel, 4241 Moorpark Ave, San Jose CA 95129
This is an interactive workshop with Peter Cohan geared especially for you who demonstrate B-to-B software to your customer and channels. Bring a copy of your demo and be prepared to present it — we’ll help you turn it into a surprisingly compelling demo!
Cost (includes breakfast, lunch, copy of Peter Cohan’s “Great Demo!” book):
- Early Registration: $536
- After March 4: $560
This seminar outlines a framework for the creation and delivery of improved demos and presentations to enable increased success in the marketing, sale, and deployment of software and related products. Whether it’s face to face, in a webinar, as a screencast, or as a self-running demo the ability to present the key benefits of your software product is essential to generating prospect interest and ultimately revenue. Peter Cohan of The Second Derivative gives us the recipe for a Great Demo!
“I am confident that with the insights gained from your workshop we will land more customers in fewer iterations.”
Lav Pachuri, CEO, Xleron Inc.
“Peter Cohan’s Great Demo method really works. It helped us win DEMOgod, and it has allowed us to explain our offering much more clearly to prospects.”
Chaim Indig, CEO, Phreesia
(See “DEMOgod Winner Phreesia Praises Peter Cohan Training“)
|
About The Speaker: Peter Cohan, Principal at Second Derivative
Community Web Site: www.DemoGurus.com
Peter Cohan is the founder and a principal of The Second Derivative, a consultancy focused on helping software organizations improve their sales and marketing results. In July 2004, he enabled and began moderating DemoGurus®, a community web exchange dedicated to helping sales and marketing teams improve their software demonstrations. In 2003, he authored Great Demo!, a book that provides methods to create and execute compelling demonstrations. The 2nd edition of Great Demo! was published March 2005.
Before The Second Derivative, Peter founded the Discovery Tools® business unit at Symyx Technologies, Inc., where he grew the business from an empty spreadsheet into a $30 million operation. Prior to Symyx, Peter served in marketing, sales, and management positions at MDL Information Systems, a leading provider of scientific information management software. Peter currently serves on the Board of Directors for Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc. and the board of advisors for Excellin, Inc. He holds a degree in chemistry.
Peter has experience as an individual contributor, manage and senior management in marketing, sales, and business development. He has also been, and continues to be, a customer.
Agenda:
- 8:15 AM Breakfast & Registration
- 8:30 AM Workshop begins
- Noon Lunch & De-brief
- 1 PM Advanced Topics
- multiple solution demos
- presenting to a mixed audience with different needs or information requirements
- vision generation demonstrations
- handling bugs, crashes, and time challenges.
- 5 PM Wrap up
Seating is Limited These are intensive sessions and we ask that you arrive at least 15 minutes before 8:30AM start time to ensure you will have a seat and won’t disrupt the session once it is underway.
For more information: Theresa Shafer 408-252-9676 events@skmurphy.com
January 18th, 2010
Create and Deliver Surprisingly Compelling Software Demonstrations
“Do The Last Thing First” — the recipe for a Great Demo!
When: Wednesday March 17, 2010
- AM Session: 8:15 am – 1:00 pm
- PM Session: 1 – 5pm Advanced Topics (see below)
Where: Moorpark Hotel, 4241 Moorpark Ave, San Jose CA 95129
This is an interactive workshop with Peter Cohan geared especially for you who demonstrate B-to-B software to your customer and channels. Bring a copy of your demo and be prepared to present it — we’ll help you turn it into a surprisingly compelling demo! AM Session Cost (includes breakfast, lunch, copy of Peter Cohan’s “Great Demo!” book):
Early Registration: $336
After March 4: $360
See also Feb 5 Announcement, Group Discounts Available for All Day Sessions
Update March 16: Rescheduled due to illness to April 9, 2010 8:15 – 5:00opm
This seminar outlines a framework for the creation and delivery of improved demos and presentations to enable increased success in the marketing, sale, and deployment of software and related products. Whether it’s face to face, in a webinar, as a screencast, or as a self-running demo the ability to present the key benefits of your software product is essential to generating prospect interest and ultimately revenue. Peter Cohan of The Second Derivative gives us the recipe for a Great Demo!
“I am confident that with the insights gained from your workshop we will land more customers in fewer iterations.”
Lav Pachuri, CEO, Xleron Inc.
“Peter Cohan’s Great Demo method really works. It helped us win DEMOgod, and it has allowed us to explain our offering much more clearly to prospects.”
Chaim Indig, CEO, Phreesia
(See “DEMOgod Winner Phreesia Praises Peter Cohan Training“)
ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Peter Cohan, Principal at Second Derivative
Community Web Site: www.DemoGurus.com
Peter Cohan is the founder and a principal of The Second Derivative, a consultancy focused on helping software organizations improve their sales and marketing results. In July 2004, he enabled and began moderating DemoGurus®, a community web exchange dedicated to helping sales and marketing teams improve their software demonstrations. In 2003, he authored Great Demo!, a book that provides methods to create and execute compelling demonstrations. The 2nd edition of Great Demo! was published March 2005.
Before The Second Derivative, Peter founded the Discovery Tools® business unit at Symyx Technologies, Inc., where he grew the business from an empty spreadsheet into a $30 million operation. Prior to Symyx, Peter served in marketing, sales, and management positions at MDL Information Systems, a leading provider of scientific information management software. Peter currently serves on the Board of Directors for Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc. and the board of advisors for Excellin, Inc. He holds a degree in chemistry.
Peter has experience as an individual contributor, manage and senior management in marketing, sales, and business development. He has also been, and continues to be, a customer.
Agenda:
- 8:15 AM Breakfast & Registration
- 8:30 AM Workshop begins
- Noon Lunch & De-brief
- 1 PM Wrap up
Seating is Limited These are intensive sessions and we ask that you arrive at least 15 minutes before 8:30AM start time to ensure you will have a seat and won’t disrupt the session once it is underway.
PM Session: Advanced Topics
In response to requests for assistance on demo delivery we have added an afternoon session to our Great Demos workshop. If this is your first exposure to the Great Demo come for the morning and get a great overview of the methodology and stay for the afternoon if you would like an opportunity for more interactive training on advanced topics such as multi-solution, multi-player demonstrations, and vision generation demonstrations. The advanced topic session as covers real life issues like handling bugs, crashes, and time challenges.
This is an interactive workshop with Peter Cohan is only available to people who have already attended the morning session or a previous Great Demo session.
When: Wednesday March 17, 2010 1:00 – 5:00 pm
Where: Moorpark Hotel, 4241 Moorpark Ave, San Jose CA 95129
Cost $200 Register for the Advanced Topics
Advanced Topics Agenda:
- 1 PM Advanced Topics
- multiple solution demos
- presenting to a mixed audience with different needs or information requirements
- vision generation demonstrations
- handling bugs, crashes, and time challenges.
- 5 PM Wrap up
For more information: Theresa Shafer 408-252-9676 events@skmurphy.com
January 4th, 2010
SKMurphy was interviewed and selected as one of a dozen case studies on Document Management Solutions for Consulting Groups by Central Desktop. Read about our innovative approach at “Document Management Solution helps SKMurphy Consulting Group Increase Productivity.”
We make some strong claims in the case study:
- Increased productivity – approximately 5 to 10 times more productive
- Significantly sped up decision making time on projects
- Eliminated version control issues for faster review cycles
The baseline is E-Mailing documents and phone tag. We rely on the edit lock that Central Desktop show to prevent you from editing the same file at the same time as someone else (this happens more than you might think as you get close to a deadline) and find that setting update notification for two hours encourages other members of the team to contribute.
We use Central Desktop to work with all of our clients and have found that it allows us to respond with drafts much more quickly and to achieve a working consensus in a few hours to a day or two. We use it to rapidly prototype the content for key E-Mails, presentation outlines, datasheets, backgrounders, and other content or documents that are used in the sales or customer engagement process by our clients. Each of our clients has their own password protected workspace, as well as any attendee at a workshop who wants one. We also use them for projects with our partners.
We think this approach offers them the following benefits:
- The workspaces are searchable and both the wiki pages and attached files are under version control so they good visibility and control over our joint work product, whether it is in planning stages, in process, or had been delivered.
- Meetings and conference calls are more productive. We use the same wiki page can be used the agenda, notes in process during the meeting, and for minutes and action items afterward. There is one place to look for anything about a meeting and it can have hyperlinks to other content that was discussed. This is an order of magnitude more productive than reconciling a stream of E-Mails for agenda and minutes.
- The workspace is the first place to look and it’s more easily organized than anyone’s inbox. It’s not uncommon for us to run a Skype text chat session for conference calls and append that to the meeting page as well. This is a lightweight approach to making meetings more productive and because things get documented immediately you have more of a complete archive as you add folks to the team or want to look back in two or three months to see what was decided.
- We normally include the cost of Central Desktop in our engagement fees but have turned over the workspace to clients at the end of an assignment. One client we worked with in 2006 through 2008 had more than 550 pages and attached files in the workspace.
We have been working in wikis since we started in 2003. We chose Central Desktop in 2006 and phased other wiki platforms out except where a customer is already using one. We have more than a hundred distinct workspaces (some are archived) that have been used with clients, workshop attendees, partner projects, and internal projects.
We are happy to have a phone conversation if you are interested in trying to incorporate them into your business: Sean has given a number of talks on them as well if you would like a briefing or presentation for your group or event. We do not resell Central Desktop and we were not compensated by them for the case study: we agreed to talk about it because we have been satisfied customers for more than three years.
Related blog posts on wikis:
October 1st, 2009
This week I have been developing content for a client’s website. We are helping them formulate a message that is intended to explain both their knowledge of their customers’ problems and how they are able to help.
Good marketing is really just good content.
It focuses on your customers’ problems and how they will benefit from your offering. It is not about your product features. It answers all of the questions–or at least all of the common questions–a customer will have they have as they consider buying your product or services.
Good marketing material should be useful, interesting, and even funny to your customers. Material should be clear and concise, it should be use the language that your customers normally use to talk about their challenges and their needs.
Here are a couple of examples we have worked with our clients on over the last year:
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