The thirst for venture capital is a knee jerk reaction because it lingers as the model to those who have never seen a different way of doing things. Venture capital may work for the VC, it may work for the management they bring in, but it seldom works for the employees of the startup and […]
Every few years, out of the closet pops some sort of magic promising to change the trajectory of enterprise sales teams. And like any crowd movement, it seems all the rage, until, well, it doesn’t. One of those rages was the Challenger Sale, a over-hyped book about getting sales people to do what they should
Many DevOps software companies are the classic example of the early VC funding miscalculation that is going to leave employees with stock close to worthless at companies who never achieve their projected valuation. DevOps is the term of art for much faster, more agile software development requiring the tools to make apps come out much
Virtually all selling in the B2B enterprise space today is to Cubicle Village, not decision makers. The difference is stark. A decision maker is driven to make things happen; the bureaucrat is not driven at all. Bureaucrats live every day making sure they are employed the next day and have a home in Cubicle Village.
Enterprise B2B–Selling to Cubicle Village and Why it Will Continue Read More »
You have stock options, but, well, it is kind of a crappy company and now you are gone and you have to decide whether to spend that 5 grand to buy them. Should you buy those options? You tell your partner or spouse, “I do not really know if I want to spend the dough,
Why You Should Buy Those Stock Options From That Crappy Company! Read More »
There is an old saying that 50% of all advertising is wasted. But, which 50%? Well in high tech sales and marketing, applying to the startup, 95% or virtually all of it is a total waste of time, money and effort. It is, in fact more of a distraction. So get rid of almost all
A rational argument can be made that the highest unnecessary cost for an enterprise software company is the hidden burden of unnecessary discounts required to hit arbitrary quarterly sales quotas driven by third rate venture capital boards. The highest ongoing cost is clearly the sales and marketing machine necessary to make an early venture capital-backed
Quarterly Revenue Madness And The Stupid People Who Do It Read More »
It’s that day. It is the company meeting where the CEO and management team stand up before you, the valuable employees, and announce they have closed a new equity round, perhaps round D, E, F or G. Here are the comments from your management and the VC, followed by the translation: CEO: “We are really
Your CEO Announces “We Got Funded”–TRANSLATION Provided Read More »
This entire week was spent in Dallas with prospective clients interspersed with interviews for our first Dallas area sales rep. Our technology is pretty unconventional, but not nearly as much as our sales approach. We think both are the way of the future. The technology solves a common problem in a very simple manner. Companies
At the SXSW conference, we had dinner with the management team for a 7-year-old cloud company that believes it has now found its way. After 5 failed sales VPs, they are off to the races and know they are going to be massively successful. Until the 6th sales VP encounters the “inherent contradiction.” Our
5 Sales VPs Later, Do You Understand Inherent Contradiction? Read More »