Thanksgiving 2014
We did something different for Thanksgiving 2014: we held a Bootstrapper’s Potluck and hosted a dinner for a dozen people or so with our family.
It’s OK To Ask “Would You Use This?” in Customer Discovery
It’s OK to ask a B2B prospect if they would use your product during customer discovery. Just don’t to stop at “Yes” and assume validation or a likely sale.
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Customer Interviews: How To Organize Findings
Bruce La Fetra of La Fetra Consulting for a conversation on customer interviews. We compared notes on qualitative conversations versus quantitative surveys and exchanged tips and tricks. Bruce presented some great insights on how to organize findings and how to take best advantage of insights gleaned from interviews.
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Preventing & Managing Challenging Customer Situations
Here are my notes from tonight’s Professional and Technical Consultants Association (PATCA) meeting on “Handling Difficult Client Scenarios in an Agile and Effective Manner.” It was a candid discussion among primarily experienced consultants about real situations that were challenging–and frequently painful. Several good suggestions for preventing and managing challenging customer situations:
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Good Content Answers Real Questions
Q: How do you develop good content for blog posts and newsletters on a regular basis? One rule of thumb for sources of good content for an e-mail newsletter is to revise something that you have already written that would be appropriate for your target audience.
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Managing Sales People
Managing sales people is a straightforward proposition: you get what you reward. Analyze the compensation package and ensure it isn’t encouraging what you don’t want or discouraging what you do. If you are unhappy with commitments the sales team is making you need to make it clear who needs to review and sign off on
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Crafting a Value Proposition
Q: I struggle with the value proposition for our product. Either I am too abstract “we offer a positive return on time invested” or too vague “help increase your ability to manage critical challenges.” Do you have any suggestions for how to frame or formulate a value proposition? Here a few questions that a value
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Quotes For Entrepreneurs–October 2014
You can follow @skmurphy to get these quotes for entrepreneurs hot off the mojo wire or wait until they are collected in a blog post at the end of each month. Enter your E-mail address if you would like to have new blog posts sent to you.
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Joseph A Murphy 1925-2007, 7 Years On
Some reflections on my relationship with my father seven years after his death. At least once a week I still get the urge to call him for advice or to update him on my children.
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Giacomo Vacca On Human Cell Analysis at CNSV Nov-4-2014
The IEEE Consulting Network of Silicon Valley continues its tradition of inviting world class experts on leading edge technologies to speak at their monthly meetings. On Tue-Nov-4-2014, Giacomo Vacca of Kinetic River will provide an overview on how flow cytometers enable a wide range of “Human Cell Analysis.” “Sean has been a pleasure to work
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Do I Need To Be A Supplicant In a Sales Call?
Q: In your blog post “Four Presentation Traps to Avoid” (which drew on Mike Monteiro’s “13 Ways Designers Screw Up a Client Presentation” which I found overall to be very valuable) you highlighted his item 4 “Not setting the stage properly” which ends with “Start the meeting by thanking them for their time.” I feel this puts you
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Four Presentation Traps to Avoid
Mike Monteiro offered “13 Ways Designers Screw Up a Client Presentation–And One Weird Trick” in a Sep-13-2014 blog post: many of these are also applicable to entrepreneurs making presentations to prospects. The whole article is worth reading, here are my top four presentation traps to avoid from his list (I have retained Monteiro’s numbering scheme).
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Entrepreneurial Passion: Good Servant, Poor Master
Entrepreneurial passion has to be based on a desire to create value, to be of service to a set of target customers. There may be many things you are interested in learning and room enough in your life for several hobbies, but pursuing a passion without regard to your ability to provide value in a
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Tips for Low Cost Marketing of Your Services
I took part in a great roundtable conversation at tonight’s PATCA meeting on “Low Cost Marketing and Advertising for Consultants” Here were a couple of suggestions that I made in response to situations or challenges that other consultants put on the table.
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David Morse: Tips To Add Graphics and Video To A Blog
David Morse left a detailed comment today on my Sep-26-2014 blog post “Lessons Learned Blogging 1400 Posts in 8 Years” that I thought I would promote to a guest post that offers some practical tips about how to add graphics and video to a blog. Here is his bio on B2BSalesVP: David Morse helps startup
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Entrepreneurs Focus On Customers Not Startup Mechanics
Excerpts from Paul Grahams’ October 2014 essay “Before the Startup” with commentary interspersed. This essay is in some ways less self-confident than many of his earlier ones. He seems to recognize more explicitly the limits of his ability to offer advice that entrepreneurs in the Y Combinator portfolio–or entrepreneurs applying to Y Combinator–will actually follow.
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Quotes For Entrepreneurs–September 2014
You can follow @skmurphy to get these quotes for entrepreneurs hot off the mojo wire or wait until they are collected in a blog post at the end of each month. Enter your E-mail address if you would like to have new blog posts sent to you.
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Mike Silverman 1964-2014
Mike Silverman passed away Sep-13-2014 after a 14 month battle with cancer. He was an entrepreneur with tremendous energy and integrity. I will miss him. He founded Ops A La Carte in 2002 and built it up to a training, testing, and consulting organization providing work for dozens of experienced reliability engineers.
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Closing the Sale: It’s Up To The Customer
I am a big fan of Jill Konrath and her Selling to Big Companies book. She has good advice on closing the sale: it’s up tot the customer. If you are selling a product that requires consideration or a complex evaluation by one or more employees of your prospect’s organization the following advice is particularly
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Lessons Learned Blogging: 1400 Posts in 8 years
This post is a retrospective look at my inaugural post in 2006 and lessons learned blogging 1400 posts over the 8 years since.
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