We’ve all seen the type. The kind that opens or approaches so hard that you can sense their nervous energy and desperation to make a sale. Usually, they get shot down. But when a prospect gives them the time of day, they get so excited about a potential deal that they make all sorts of concessions. Long term profitability suffers as a result.
Aggressive Early, Passive Late – probably the wrong way to optimize sales.
Someone with value to give to a potential customer opens straightforwardly but gently. Qualifying the prospect correctly …

How many times have you heard this? How many times have you yourself said it? I too have been guilty of it.
The problem with being able to sell only what you like or “believe in” is that you never have to improve your sales skills. You get to brush aside every failure to sell something simply by saying, “I didn’t really believe in that.” Or you get to take a pass on a great sales opportunity that requires you to learn a new industry, sell to higher level executives, manage …

There are plenty of good pieces on the Internet about how to build a good board of advisors.  Go ahead, Google them.  There is one super post about why you shouldn’t bother to build an advisory board by the smart guys at 37Signals.  Essentially, they’re saying that too many supposedly critical things are myths that keep you from building the company and products.  But what if someone has approached you to be an advisor to his company?  There aren’t very many pieces about how to be a good advisor.  So how do you …

My first impression of Seth Godin upon meeting him was that he is an extraordinarily efficient person.  You wouldn’t think of a “creative” as efficient in the sense that a supply chain manager, hamburger flipper, accountant, or the Octomom are efficient.  But Seth conducted interviews with about thirty candidates for the SAMBA program in under three hours.  He made up his mind on who fit perfectly soon after and, it turns out, he picked an amazing group.
How amazing? That remains to be seen. Everyone in the group was so remarkable, I …

My good friend Dan and I were talking shop about our recent business challenges. He works for Omniture (OMTR), the leading Web analytics software company, and is one of the top sales guys there. As an aside, we were both at the University Venture Fund when I sourced our Omniture deal and we had the privilege to co-invest with Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and Scale Venture Partners in one of Utah’s shining technology successes. Every quarter, my friend handily beats his quotas and makes good money doing so. Life ought …

Optimism abounds with the market resolutely shaking off bad news while focusing myopically on the good, or relatively good, news. The cheerleaders on CNBC (GE) can scarcely be heard uttering the dreadful words of inflation, recession, stagnation, credit crisis, and foreclosures. Happily, they talk about earnings beats. Surprisingly, there are a number of really substantial earnings beats that seem to justify the current sanguine tone of the market.
A lot of the beats thus far have come from blue chip companies that dominate their industries and sectors. Logically, this makes sense. …