Would you found an enterprise software company, take all the risk, go into debt, maybe mortgage your home if you had a built in tax of 40% – 70%? That is what companies are paying today for the ridiculous sales and marketing costs of every new dollar in revenue. For each dollar they bring in, […]
Cost of Enterprise Sales—The Vast Not-So-Hidden Tax Read More »
What the heck is MEDDIC? The first time I ever heard this term was from an IBM VP of Sales who wanted to implement it at a raw startup in Seattle. When I learned what it meant (who is the economic buyer? what are the metrics? what is the decision process?—you all know this
MEDDIC — When Sales Management Became Really Stupid Read More »
Wow mom! I just joined a startup and they are giving me 10,000 stock options. Everyone seems to know somebody who works for a tech company and has stock options. And likely everyone knows someone who experienced a “liquidity event” and those 10,000 options did not buy lunch. Why? Stock options are one of the
Employee Stock Options—The Last Legal Way to Screw Your Talent Read More »
For those few educated in classical economics, Gresham’s Law is a real find. It essentially states that when crappy money comes into a system, the good money (gold), is hoarded and goes out of circulation. The lesson is that when junk enters any system, excellence departs. Well, in enterprise sales, it is no different and we see
Enterprise Sales—The Mediocre Drive Out The Best Read More »
Startup tech companies need money. Money is a commodity. Like any commodity, it has a price. The price of money from a venture capital firm is the highest possible price, with many lurking problems. VC money often results in the total dilution of employees, early investors and founders so they get little, often nothing
A friend and customer from a major telco had a last-minute emergency and asked me to stand in for him to speak to a group of Fortune 100 technology scouts at their annual meeting. I did not know there was such a thing as a tech scout but apparently, there is such a job and
Tech Scouts — In Search of Disruptive Technologies Read More »
Your startup won its first few deals and you are off and running. Growth is happening and you need to staff up. You do a private equity round. In that round, the first thing you do is make sales projections. Bring in the MBAs who can multiply anything while not knowing much about what they
Fire the VP of Sales—It Is Always the First Answer Read More »
Once I was the victim of VC financing and the forced steroids it injected into my company. We had just delivered the Ebay fraud engine and were fast to becoming the standard for some very interesting fraud detection. We vaulted from almost bankruptcy to over $100 million in valuation. Our VCs wanted us to take
I Fired 35 People And It Changed My Life—-For the Better Read More »
After a startup has had its third Sales VP, is perhaps on its E round of funding and it still is not breaking out, it is what one would call a restart—or a restart is what it needs. It is at the edge of the Dead Zone. That is the space where many tech companies
Working with CEOs of raw startups offers lots of surprises. One of the most common—it is no longer a surprise, is their shock that the industry does not beat a path to their new product. The startup CEO often sees his or her solution as something the world desperately needs, thus as soon as people