Water Under the Bridge

This is awesome and it is similar to the process thread earlier. In fact this client is all about process and the process of implementing process. Client CEO of mine has been building process in his corporation (50+ people) to “know what we need to know to grow.” As you can imagine the pace of process building is dragging back the pace of growth. Some examples; Four people can possibly be involved in approving pricing for a quote to the customer; the sales rep, the VP of sales, the CFO and the CEO. Nice velocity on that one, these four typically cannot agree on lunch or the definition of a “lead” let alone pricing. Average Selling Price per transaction? $30K. Red Flag number one. The discounting structure is fluid. And by fluid I mean like the liquid metal hottie terminator on T3 fluid. The rep can negotiate some discount and of course since there are no limits he can call the VP of Sales for even more discounting permission, and then the CFO gets to see it and he can modify the discou...

Nice turn of phrase and very appropriate for a client I am working with. The client is growing; in fact it is growing so fast it has decided to implement process to handle the growth. The process is so detailed that it is actually slowing growth and in some areas, forcing a decline in growth. So I was asked why. The why was very straightforward to discover. You have a sub-$10M company implementing the same process as a $3B company. Not only is the process decisioneered beyond rational thought, it is so complex that asking a single person to manage it is crippling. For example; When a company sells a product that adds onto or works with another product, infrastructure, or application the process should reflect the “aftermarket” nature of this business. Look at Home Depot. They do not sell houses, but they sell about every aftermarket part and piece for homes (and outside the home) you can imagine. And they make no bones about it. One does not go to home depot to re-engineer their house ...

There is no there, there. Gertrude Stein might as well been talking about technology pitches of all kinds and not Oakland (or the Oakland Raiders). I still hear the phrase, “they didn’t get it.” In fact I realize now that when someone says the phrase that the audience, person or whomever “does not get it” it really means in all likelihood the audience is not open for business on that topic. Open for business. What a simple straightforward qualifier for any interaction predicated on a commerce taking place as the desired outcome. For those times where a person does not get there is a person or persons who are open for business on your topic. Let me explain. Miscommunications are the standard as far as forms of communication in the tech business. Often the result is too much discussion generated on that take on a life of their own and simply never seemed to get resolved. Often both the sender of the message and the receiver cannot even agree on what it was they are talking about; see De...

Okay I have to come clean after being called out by an alert reader. I left out two events unique to myself at a sales kickoff. So in the interest of surfacing repressed memories here goes; I spilled a bottle of Corona on the wife of the then CEO soaking her whomptillion dollar silk shawl. The upside of this was she handled this with grace and aplomb and I was not fired. The CEO did joke after she got back from cleaning up, “So what did you do after you worked at (withheld) ?” Second was during the sales award ceremony I was called up as one of the top 3 reps (I was #3 out of 150) to receive my award. This company was bit different as there were many more (about 2 to 1) saleswomen then men. The VP of WW Operations was taking a wide interpretation of the obligatory handshake and kissing all the women on the cheek. So when I accepted my award, yes, I planted one on his cheek. That got the crowd going. The net result? I was promoted. Also the CEO would send me notes via internal company m...

Perhaps nothing strikes fear in the hearts of sales professional like the weekly, ahem, interactive sales call. Having run hundreds and sat in on thousands more of these here is a (partial and edited) list of what sales people want and don’t want culled from only the intelligent survey responses of the sales animal; Do not make everyone sit through everyone else’s pipeline. This is number one by at least three lengths. What happens? The sales people not reviewing pipeline go off line until they are called. They IM, email, and even take other calls. I have seen these call run two hours, arguably 5% of a sales person time during the week where they could otherwise be in front of customers persuading them to buy. Far and away the reply to the pipeline type calls is; waste of time. Second? Do not schedule a one on one for more than 50 minutes. In fact a (typical) 90 minute one on one to review pipeline is an additional 3.75% of a sales persons time to review what in some cases was already ...

Here it is, in its entirety. The Director’s cut if you will. Unrated, unvarnished, unreal, and all true. Times have changed, but in certain parts of the world, it has stood still. Breathe, relax into reading this post, center your Chi, breathe, it’s only a blog, it’s only blog, it’s only…. It is the early afternoon in a fall day in October, we are somewhere on the east coast of North America. The afternoon, Day 5 for me, in a sales kick off summit that resembles a “how not to” seminar on presenting, coordinating, feeding, housing, and motivating a new sales team. A conference room set up in the employee cafeteria and actually not bad. Lunch was served prior to an afternoon of learning the company elevator pitch. Odd how the elevator-pitch (which is 60 seconds long) was a two hour session presented by yours truly, but that is the next post. Lunch was a unique combination of pizza and French fries. That is right, pizza and French fries. So I get to present to a group of carbo-infused, ha...

This actually happened. It is all true I am not making it up or embellishing. Hell, I couldn’t. I could not have dreamed, conjured, projected, created or visualized what happened to me last week. In fact it resembled the movie The Hills Have Eyes II , the obvious delusion of madmen (no woman would let this happen) with conscientious connection to the reality of others. In fact it has taken me a full week to be able to talk about. Like seeing Winged Migration really high in the middle of an afternoon with a bunch of retirees and never coming clean (literally and figuratively) about where you were. Our story opens on a Sunday at Terminal C, San Jose International (cough) Airport. It is 6:10AM and one of about 6 flights leaving between San Jose and Salt Lake City, Denver, Chicago, Phoenix, LA etc is queuing up to leave. It is the Sunday before the Canadian Thanksgiving (as it is wrongly referred to) which is the next day, Monday. So everyone, me included is trying to get to someplace i...

This is a beautiful thing for your competition to be doing in the market. This mostly applies to start ups who are exploiting a gap in platform player’s offering where the gap is most likely going to be closed but not anytime (2-3 years) soon. And in fact it may technically infeasible (de-feasible?) to do so with their current organization, architecture and IP. During a sales training on competitive positioning in a complex selling situation for a emerging start up in the enterprise software space two issues stood out; one is sales is not that complex if you are talking to the right person(s), second if your product is a superior solution how do you demonstrate this fact to the potential customer? After an hour or so of the usual our product does X better than theirs, and customers pick us because of X,Y, and Z it occurred to me. A number of platform players continue down the path of Incompetent Technical Persistence because they have to. What does Incompetent Technical Persistence mea...

This is a great time management tool. Often I get call that looks like it is relevant to my day (so says the caller-id). Turns out that the call for a partnership is a recruiter, or trade show rep, or other such time eater I do not want to talk too. So what to do? Simple there is a high probability you answered the call out of reflex, brain cramp or other such failing of focus and need to extricate yourself from the call as soon as possible. Enter the “Con Call.” When I get on a call that is clearly a black hole for my time I immediately check the time, if I am within 10 minutes of the hour or half hour I cut of the person and say; “Okay, I really want to give this my full attention, I am 10 minutes out on a conference call and am writing up my notes. Drop me an email and I will get back you, guaranteed.” Give email address, hang up, and move on. So if you get the “I’ve got a con call” line, most likely you have missed the mark and need to re-prepare your approach. And yes I do answer ...

This is rich. I was asked to provide a client with a presentation on how to give a presentation to C-Level executives, seriously. Talk about slippery slope. What to say that not only meets the literal structure of a good preso, and what literal structure to follow? The always relevant, who, what, when, where, why and how? The always riveting ACE presentation structure? The marketing framework of; what we are (insert value prop/startling statement here)? Who needs this? Our product does “X” unlike the competition who obviously cannot do “X” as well as us. Which means to you…? Nope, skip them all and go to the source. C-Level people who are pitched more than Larry Ellison’s yacht during a Pisco sour infused, Sydney to Hobart run. That is right I asked the big wigs, the top guns, the man (women) the HMFIC, the buck stops here (it does not by BTW), the subpoenaed, Sarbanes Oxley-ed to death, board managing, decision making, house remodeling, globe-trotting, nothing like you and me crowd....

Well, I have never written anything other than a bubble sort program for a computer that accepted input via a punch card reader. And I thank all of you "coders" for that. I simply do not have to program. All the effort, sweat, late nights, and code crushes, (a wine country reference), billions in advanced education and artistry of the SW development process are appreciated, but most likely lost on me in the big picture. Now what is MSFT like as a person? Microsoft is that guy you see at the latest hip restaurant (Web X.0). He looks tired, is actually 45 to 50 years old and looks older. He is half paying attention to his spouse (Windows Server) and too young kids (SQL and MSN), while mostly wondering when the kitchen remodeling will end if it ever does (Gates leaving). He can no longer conspicuously consume to feed the hole in his soul where his childhood used to be (DOS grab). But he does anyway, and is typically a year or more behind any meaningful social trend (selling ads ...

Back and in the mix again after a week in the beautiful pacific NW including a 4 day stay at the Lake Crescent Lodge. In a wired world I have put off getting any type of mobile email device. I did however get a customer call on Sunday (September 2) and took a conference call lakeside. The quiet was unsettling and I am sure the local wildlife now knows quite a bit about data discovery and recovery. Now, one issue I dealt with last week relates to negotiation. I swear it is the fourth or fifth time I heard a potential customer say, “We need you be here (insert huge discount here)” as we do not have enough money in the budget.” Being the Chief Perspective Officer I was asked to consult on this call (the lakeside call) and found an interesting customer behavior that appeared to be a mystery to many sales people. This customer is well described in the book, “The Wisdom of Wolves: Nature's Way to Organizational Success,” by Twyman Towery who obviously has a name that sounds like he is ...

One of the clients I worked with wanted a refresher course on negotiation. And not the full page ad like you see in the airline magazines next to the ad for; “even cheaper and just as effective” noise cancelling headphones. They specifically asked for a catchy outline that sales people can even remember. So I negotiated a fee and introduced them to the BOP, MOP and STOP method. Now I am not a negotiating expert but have negotiated comprehensive agreements with HP, Boeing, Intel, Fannie Mae, Lockheed Martin, etc. So I get it. Here is the mindset I proffered to be taken into every negotiation; BOP; is defined as the Best Outcome Possible, highest price paid for the product/service one can conceive to be realistic under perfect circumstances. MOP; is the Minimal Outcome Possible or the lowest price you will accept for your product and service in a negotiated agreement. STOP; is any number below MOP that is unacceptable value and you walk away from the negotiation. Now I purposefully omitt...

Okay, I now believe I am onto something. And not like Walker Texas Ranger with the mono-expressive mug and the kick somebody’s ass in the process onto something, oh no, it is more of an “Ah-Ha!” moment like Agent Dave Kujan in the Usual Suspects when he realizes he just was spun a tall tale by Kaiser Soze himself. Decision process has been addressed by many, and almost all more qualified in formal, scientific and practical education then me. So I take the position of being one of the Cult of the Amateur , (great read by the way), monkeys and I proffer; Decisoneering (TM Pending Viral Adoption). Decisioneering is the over-engineering of a simple decision because you can. In fact by using Decisioneering often the event that drove the decision point is over, closed out and has expired by the time the Decisioneered solution has been finalized. It is the equivalent of deciding whether to swat and kill a fly now with whatever is at hand or, via researching, proposing, socializing, re-rese...

It was a dark and stormy night, actually it was clear warm and I was stuck in traffic on the bridge over the Columbia River heading from Portland into Washington. While the HOV lane was available it was moving only slightly faster that the DOA lane of single drivers in their shiny metal boxes. The driver, let’s just call her; Driver 8, asked about my latest foray into working with a company that has arguably world class technology and is stuck the revolving door of needing a step by step plan in order to go to market. Without the plan, there is fear something else may happen. “Well, how are you going to help them?” Driver 8 inquired with all the familiarity of a 15 year partnership (grumble). After several minutes of me making the mistake of thinking out loud and using an impressive string of forward looking phrases, motivational quotes, and promising that my impressive “ism” vocabulary insures this client “field level traction” for sales, Driver 8 turns to me and dead pans; “Ibid.” So...

This is culled from a follow-up email to a company I gave a comprehensive (well the post contradicts that a bit) sales training class on complex solution selling. Omissions by design, and yes, I revised my preso. One of the most interesting blogs I read regularly is Marc Andreessen’s titled; blog.pmarca.com. In it he explores a wide range of topics for business and entrepreneurialism. One topic of late caught my eye as it appears to relate to how positioning and selling a software product is similar to being open to different kinds of luck. Hear me out on this. Fast forwarding through the research aspect of the four kinds of luck (a good read by the way) I will start at the end and go from there. The role luck plays in any successful endeavor is an interesting and oft minimized catalyst to success, and as start ups are measured this is building a successful business or building to a successful exit. Luck in Marc's blog post comes in 4 types: · Chance I is completely impersonal; you...

Recently I participated in a 3 day executive strategery session to determine a positioning and overall corporate message. One of the habits I developed over the years is to take very thorough and copious notes. So I took, no lie, 52 pages of notes over 3 days. Upon return to my home base I reviewed the notes and found some interesting tidbits I wanted to pass along. Initially what struck me as interesting is my preparation included a note to myself that this company sells one product. When I was in transit to the east coast for the meeting I also noticed I noted that my estimated time for completion of the meeting objectives would take one maybe two days max to drive to a coherent, well differentiated positioning statement. In the end, I was wrong here are some highlights; First is one of the “isms” I constructed while observing a debate on data types (yes this is my life) between a technical savant and a finance guy. Seriously this actually happened. The thread started as a high leve...

Best T-Shirt I have seen on a female same sex couple: "Balls are for Soccer."

Over a rather pricey and tasty dinner last weekend the topic of long term spousal travel (couples together more than 15 years) and “travel divorce moments” came up as a topic. Now for those not in the know go here and read this over 1,000 times. For those of us in the long term category read on. In this particular case I was asked MO on two events that provided divorce moment rage on a trip to the Scottish Scotch country. In effect who had “hand” in the overall handling of the situation? And no, none of these were the result of too many wee drams of the good stuff. First was what I call an operational incident. The scenario is as the couple is traveling the dirt and mud rows of Scotland seeking the next Scotch-ery (trademarked). Whilst driving on a particularly challenging dirt road the rental car (Ford something or other and that is really not the point anyway) hit a mud puddle. The man is driving the woman is jabbering… um, riding in the passenger seat. First let’s just say the od...

One side job I have is as a business spokesperson for our company. In one particualr presentation to a captive audience (something in NY if I recall correctly) I mashedup marketing speak from a number of companies familiar to the audeince. Needless to say my mashup made as much sense as its individual components; "Our solution paradigm offers a higher level of transparency to your organization by automating unstructured content to help you meet your intellectual capital challenges through contextualization, semantic network cartridges and an aggregation layer that provides data agnostic access to heterogeneous information sources, all while providing exceptional accuracy due to our collaborative filtering and relevance algorithms. Concept matching technology and active folders can automatically create taxonomies and build social networks to better connect your carbon-based resources to your silicon assets. ESP and EIEIO technologies will allow your employees to execute a technical...

Not sure how this list was origianlly generated, but I have had it for some time now; Be brief, be bright and be gone. Take notes, really good notes. The customer is not always right. Know you customer better than they do. Your manager\boss will always ask you a ? you have not asked your customer. Your territory will get cut. You will get screwed on a commission check. You will probably fail more and become more successful in the process. You need to think of what is next, not of what has happened. Stop making up scenarios of what might happen and focus on what you can make happen. You are often misjudged by your superiors, but rarely misjudged by your subordinates. Change happens, deal with it. Don't believe your press clippings, either way. Manage the process & not the product. A customer will lie to you. Set & manage expectations to your customer and within your own company. If the product you sell actually does what you say it does, count yourself lucky. You can't l...

Feel free to redistribute: This email may or may not contain forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, this email will look ridiculous. In fact it may end up as front page news. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements of the plans, strategies and objectives of management for future operations; any statements concerning expected development, performance, or market share relating to products and services; anticipatory statements, which are best guesses made herein as statements regarding expected or unexpected operational and financial results; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing statements about statements. Risks are, well, risks. And one should not assume this email will be relevant i...

This actually happened to another company I am familiar with; After a 146 presentations to qualified prospects, in which none of the overtures successfully resulted in a sale, one prospect in an unusually candid and clear moment summed up the product to Rich (no longer working there) the sales guy as follows: "Rich, I have to be honest. Your product is underwhelming." Thankfully this prospect stopped the madness, the company folded, and the product is now secured away in the same warehouse that contains the "Ark of the Covenant."

One of the side effects of being a founder is that you get a lot of unsolicited and solicited pitches from potential parts, employees, investors, suppliers, business service providers (mostly recruiters), and generally a lot of people interested in leveraging your corporate assets and taking your money (and time). Part of the growth process of our company is to assign someone to look these suitors over to make sure you find the diamond in the rough, and weed out the marginal or insane opportunities that can drain precious business time. Peter Rip, whose blog I read often has a great summary of the value of time for a start up: "It often feels like the scarcest resource in a startup is money. It is not. Time is scarcer. You can raise more money, but you cannot raise more time." So while a colleague and I sat in an unusually mind numbing preso of how a potential partner could use our sales team and customer base as a “co-marketing” opportunity I day dreamed about a device that...

For lack of better phraseology pigeon-holing is the process whereby incoming executives, and employees are automatically placed into skill set buckets based on what their perceived role has been in the company. Newly hired executives quickly place personnel in functional buckets to more quickly define roles and responsibilities as they move their preferred players into roles throughout the organization. This has a two pronged effect. First it is easy for the new executives to pigeon–hole existing employees as a time saver to move their quickly to their agenda. By tagging an employee with a “sales guy” or an “operational guy” label the employees can then be rapidly slotted into the new organization. This allows for the quickest implementation of the new model and clears the transition path for the newly hired executive employees. So all of our employees get secretly (or in some cases not so secretly) voted into pigeon-holes to allow new execs to set a foundation organizational hierarchy...

While participating in a rather tedious discussion of the sales team effectiveness, well in this case its ineffectiveness, I heard the following; “They (meaning any sales person on the team) can just call on their contact network while we ramp lead gen.” Yikes. While the words stung my ex-sales person ears I thought there has to be an “ism” for this start up phenomena. That is a start up hires a salesperson who has a strong Rolodex and expects them to generate business from this Rolodex as a means to ramp to quota while the company gets its marketing house in order. The inevitable end result is the salesperson exhausts his or her contact database and ends up on a PIP (Performance Improvement Plan) and then is let go for under achieving. Then it hit me; Rolodeath. This is the “ism” I am looking for to describe this group think outcome. Imminent death for a salesperson occurs by allowing them to exhaust their personal network with no real lead gen in sight. Anyone? Buehler?

A toast to the Happy Couple 060907 There are critical times in your life where the universal lattice of coincidence places two people on a collision course where time and space lose their control and the world revolves around each other. Often what is in one’s heart is left for viewing by a lone member of the audience. Scene after scene played in the solitary confines of a personal theater. It is rare when the emotional and literal movie of life is shared with an audience. Today as friends, confidants, canines and the result of unusually low US immigration standards imposed on our ancestors, we have been invited to a private screening of the epic saga that is now Mr. and Mrs. . Tickets to this premier were hard to come by. I had mine on eBay and had too turn down a final bid of almost $742. But I did it willing and with a complete disregard of its effect on my seller’s rating. Which brings me to my clichés, cheese covered sentiments and open ended well wishes; Molly. Good golly Miss Mo...

Hi, as a long indentured and seemingly misplaced technology person (more on the latter, later) I get to hear some "double take" rhetoric while participating in; collaborative groups, forward-thinking planning sessions, strategery meetings (thanks Will), and in the day to day cubical rants of my many coworkers. One of the best I ever heard, and I wish I knew who said it and when is; "You can lead a horse to water but that is water under the bridge." Why a blog? Simple. My best man at my wedding 10 years ago in January on the anniversary of Elvis Presley’s birthday, just sold his company to Google, and is now courtesy of the halo effect, a technical and business genius. He imparted these words of wisdom; "Get out, now." Essentially his take on his massive exit is this, "I am an eight year overnight sensation. I did not go to the right school, had average grades, the wrong degree, and am at heart, a marketing guy." Outside of the fact that he has ma...