Q: How Does a First Time Founder Learn Sales?
You learn sales by doing sales: as a founder you must sell. Sales is a conversation, marketing is a broadcast. Marketing gets the phone to ring, sales takes the call and closes the deal. […]
Be Open Kimono With Partners
Work with trusted partners open kimono: disclose relevant financials, plans, and internal processes to increase synergy. Play a long game. […]
Address Technology, Management, and Executive Concerns To Close Enterprise Deals
To close enterprise deals is a complex undertaking that requires you to orchestrate a mix of conversations and other activities with three kinds of stakeholders: technologists, managers, and executives. […]
CEOs Who Are Engineers Should Delegate Design Work And Focus On Sales
It’s not uncommon for CEOs who are engineers is to hire someone to focus on sales. But unless they know how to sell their product, this is a mistake. CEOs need to learn the basics of how to sell their product so they can manage the sales function. […]
A Practical Introduction to Social Capital for Bootstrappers
This is a practical overview of social capital, an essential concept for bootstrappers despite being hard to measure. I offer suggestions for growing your business network, and enhancing your reputation, explaining why increasing social capital creates value for your startup. […]
Enterprise Sales Requires a Project Management Mindset
The SKMurphy model for enterprise sales uses a project management mindset: define and deliver projects that create value for the customer. Enterprise Sales Requires a Project Management Mindset […]
Interview with Patricia Watkins on Managing Sales In a Downturn
This is a ten minute interview (audio and edited transcript) I did with with Patricia Watkins on July 24-2020. Patrica is an experienced salesperson and sales executive who’s been helping companies drive sales for more than two decades. We discuss some of the challenges you need to manage during a [...]
The Power of a Simple Thank You Note
Email and text messages may have replaced most postal mail, but a handwritten thank you note conveys a feeling of thoughtfulness, appreciation, and care. […]
The Robin and the Cherries: Sharing Value You Co-Create With Customers
In the same way that we must share cherries with robins if we want them to nest in our neighborhood, we can only capture a part of the value that our software creates for our customers. […]
Selling IoT Devices and Networks
Three tips for selling in an early market, with a particular focus on selling IoT devices in 2017: find early adopters, start with a pilot, and identify partners who understand how to foster change. […]
Daniel Kahneman’s Reasoned Rule Approach to Reducing Case Management Errors
A reasoned rule approach is a good first step to managing decisions that fall into common patterns or cases. You identify six to eight variables that are distinct and obviously impact the outcome of the case and normalize them into standard scores that can then be added or averaged to [...]
2017 Workshop Schedule
Sign up NOW! May 4&5, 2017 https://great-demo1705.eventbrite.com Oct 18&19, 2017 https://great-demo1710.eventbrite.com
Questions to Answer Before You Start Negotiating
Here are some questions to ask yourself before you start negotiating a complex business relationship: for example a software license, SaaS subscription, or a reseller or OEM relationship. Entire books are written on negotiation, I am trying to highlight some questions that can get overlooked. […]
Nine Rules from Monetizing Innovation
I am at the Intrapreneurship Conference in Palo Alto today and “Monetizing Innovation” by Madhavan Ramanujam and George Tacke. The book is a fast read that incorporates a some pricing theory into new product introduction, here are nine rules they offer for a successful innovation. […]
Newsletter: Pricing to Value
Our September/October 2016 newsletter explores different aspects of the challenge pricing to value: setting the price of your product based on the value that it offers a prospect. […]
Fifteen Quotes on Negotiation
Here are fifteen quotes that each communicate a different truth about negotiation. I have added some commentary to suggest how to apply them. […]
Texas Hold’Em as a Model for Technology Startups
Texas Hold’Em offers some useful models for technology startups: pick the right table (competitors) and understand how your cards best combine with common cards (the status quo and adjacent possible) […]
If You Need Smarter Prospects, You Need a Better Message
I have learned the hard way whenever I wish for smarter prospects it means I need to improve my presentation, demo, or proposal: whatever it is that I have offered them that they didn’t understand, or believe, or decide to act on. […]
Q: How Can I Maximize ROI and Minimize Risk?
You can only capture a share of the value that you create if you want to create a sustainable business. While you need to assess the likely return on investment from your efforts and your probability of success, you also need to look at any deal from the other side [...]
When You Are No Longer The Smartest Person In The Room
You may have been the smartest person in the room for a long time, but getting into a room with a customer changes that because a key knowledge domain of interest is the customer’s situation and needs. Here are some suggestions for how to keep learning instead of acting like [...]